The Ghost in the Machine
by oqidaun
Summary: The story picks up where the film left off. Smith finds himself cast adrift without a memory and at the mercy of an unusual stranger with a past as confusing as his own. Complete story.
1. Disclaimer and Credits

The Ghost in the Machine  
  
Disclaimer: The Ghost in the Machine is fan fiction inspired by the film The Matrix © Warner Bros. Entertainment. The Ghost in the Machine is not related to the official film enterprise in any way and represents an original work © oqidaun / M.L. Nicholson utilizing the concept developed by Larry and Andy Wachowski.  
  
Credits:  
  
All Opening Lyrics taken from Hymn (Front 242, Up Evil).  
  
Closing Lyrics:  
  
Chapter One: Everything Must Perish (Frontline Assembly, Epitaph) Chapter Two: The Day the World Went Away (Nine Inch Nails, Halo Thirteen) Chapter Three: Motion (Front 242, Up Evil) Chapter Four: It's the End of the World As We Know It (REM, Document) Chapter Five: Dream of Waking (AFI, Art of Drowning EP) Chapter Six: Unknown Dreams (Front Line Assembly, Implode) Chapter Seven: Can't Stop (Suicidal Tendencies, The Art of Rebellion) Chapter Eight: Totalimmortal (AFI, All Hallows) Chapter Nine: Wester (AFI, The Art of Drowning) Chapter Ten: Mr Self Destruct (Nine Inch Nails, Halo Eight) Chapter Eleven: Michael (Son of Sam, Songs of the Earth)  
  
Additional Citations: Chapter Seven: Eric K. Drexler, Engines of Creation. (1986). Chapter Ten: Ray Bradbury, "The Wish" in Long After Midnight (1978). Chapter Twelve: "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" poem by Dylan Thomas.  
  
Rating: R-ish for Language and violent content. Perhaps you're familiar with Kid Rock's song Bawitdaba "Cuss like a sailor, drink like a Mick." Well, I am Irish, but the first part applies more poignantly to this situation. Yes, I'll have soap for lunch tomorrow. 


	2. Welcome to the Real World

The Ghost in the Machine

**Disclaimer: _The Ghost in the Machine_ is fan fiction inspired by the film _The Matrix © _Warner Bros. Entertainment.  _The Ghost in the Machine_ is not related to the official film enterprise in any way and represents an original work © oqidaun / M.L. Nicholson utilizing the concept developed by Larry and Andy Wachowski.**

**Credits: **

All Opening Lyrics taken from _Hymn (Front 242, Up Evil)._

**Closing Lyrics:**

Chapter One:  _Everything Must Perish_ (Frontline Assembly, Epitaph)

**Rating: **

Chapter One: PG-13 Language

Generally R-ish for Language and violent content. Perhaps you're familiar with Kid Rock's song _Bawitdaba "Cuss like a sailor, drink like a Mick." Well, I am Irish, but the first part applies more poignantly to this situation.  Yes, I'll have soap for lunch tomorrow._

**Chapter One**

**"Welcome to the Real World"**

And disorder must come
    
    And disorder must reign

Every minute will count

When disorder is king. 

The humid air veiled the world in a sickening gray haze and copper colored sun smiled approvingly.   The sweaty sidewalks were abandoned as though everyone had retreated ahead of the approaching storm.  Smith collapsed on the wrought iron bench at the edge of Hopper Park and buried his throbbing head in his hands. The unseasonably balmy weather was conducive neither to thinking nor walking.  The day knew no medium, only extremes. The bench was unforgivably hard, the sun excessively bright and the air had never been heavier nor more stale. Without raising his head or opening his eyes he loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. For all intensive purposes Smith felt like he was going to vomit.  

Time? Date? Place?  He struggled to remember any detail that would help him figure out what he was doing sitting in the miserable sun staring at his shoes.  He focused on his neatly crisscrossed shoelaces and the sharp crease in his trousers struggling to remember getting dressed, leaving his house, or walking to the park.  A dense fog descended in his mind forming an impermeable cordon between his present and past.  The gravity of the situation set in and he realized that not only could he not remember putting on his shoes, he was unable to remember any detail about his life.  His heart quickened and the nausea intensified as he tried to recall his name. He sat up straighter, hoping that the change in posture would jar his memory. The only thing he was reminded of was his throbbing head. 

Emptiness.

"Michael?" Smith looked up and reasoned that the voice's pitch registered somewhere between that of a strangled goat and a screeching banshee. A petite woman with red hair so unnatural that the color could only be reproduced by the slow decay of toxic chemicals dropped down on the bench beside him.  She wore a faded black leather jacket and smelled of cigarettes mingled with rich perfume. She was drinking coffee through a straw from a paper cup.  "What in the hell are you doing around here?  I thought you'd gone off with Howie?" 

Smith attempted to narrow his bloodshot eyes and give her the cool dismissive stare he had perfected in another life.  The stare was unattainable in his present condition and all he manage was an agonized look of disinterest.   Squinting against the bright sunlight, he tried to keep her in focus.  "What?" His voice surprised him not so much because it rang like a steel gong in his head, but because he had never heard it before. 

"What's happened to you?" He did not recoil when she moved closer to him.  Despite the fact Smith did not know who she was, her familiarity was comforting.  Slowly, she reached out and touched the side of his head.  Her touch revealed the source of the continual throbbing.  "My God, looks like you've been hit upside the head with a cricket bat." Smith raised his hand to his head and looked curiously at the blood covering his slender fingers. "What the bloody hell happened to you?" The woman's voice was no less abrasive than before.

"I don't know, but you're right in saying it's bloody." He accepted the handkerchief she offered and pressed it to his temple resting his elbow on his knee and closing his eyes against the pain.  The pain produced an unusual sensation of fear and curiosity. He could not remember ever feeling this way before, but certainly he must have. 

"You don't remember how you got your head split open?"  As he leaned forward, she caught sight of the gun in his shoulder holster. "Damn it, Michael, what are you in to?" Her expression hardened and she moved back.

"What? I have no clue what you're talking about," Smith growled at the woman, her questions and this fellow named Michael. "Who are you?" If she could ask questions then so could he.  Momentarily, her face grew pale, but then her jaw tightened and she took hold of his elbow and hauled him to his feet.

"I'm Kai, Fuckhead," She narrowed her eyes, her jaw remained set. She watched carefully as his expression remained blank. "Shit, you'd better have the biggest concussion in the history of humanity, cause I'm not going to play games, Michael." 

"Games? I'm not the one who started in with the twenty questions, Ms. Fuckhead." Smith was not expecting the sharp punch to his ribs. A thin smile escaped even as error embarrassed him. "I'm assuming that's not your proper name?" 

"Why me?" Kai breathed as she helped Smith down the deserted sidewalk.  "Michael, you're gone for six months and here out of the blue you come back saying you don't remember a damn thing.  If it wasn't for your head being smashed in, I'd left your sorry ass on the bench.  I know you would have done the same for me. Amnesia is something they get in soap operas and poorly written pulp fiction."  Her touch was not gentle. "There's something different about your eyes…  What kind of drugs are you doing? Are you drunk?" 

Kai droned on and Smith stopped listening.  How could he forget knowing this woman?  She asked a hundred questions, made a thousand accusations and waited not for a single reply.  Her step was purposeful and though she was dwarfed by his six-foot two-inch stature she maintained a remarkably commanding presence.  

The shadows of the cold lifeless buildings waged war with the orange sun.  The street narrowed and the old brownstone apartments grew closer.  Kai tugged him along through isolated unfamiliar streets, stopping randomly as if she were testing to see if he knew where they were going. Smith stumbled over the backs of her feet a dozen times, before she dispensed with the subterfuge. She finally stopped in front of a plain looking building with a curiously painted green door.  She looked at him suspiciously, "Here we are," and made no move to open the door. 

Smith reached out irritably and seized the doorknob.  The door did not budge.  He yanked and jerked turning the knob and still nothing happened.  Suppressing the agony in his head, he hit the door violently with his shoulder.  It creaked but the swollen wood did not shift.

Kai put her hand on his arm as he backed away and turned the knob while pushing against the kick plate with her scuffed periwinkle colored combat boot.  The door swung open freely and Smith leveled a dark stare at her.

 "You really don't remember. Do you Michael?"  

I hope I won't forget this place  
this burning sky that we call home  
in the end we stand alone  
come alive, come alive 

Breathe

From _Everything Must Perish_ (Front Line Assembly, Epitaph)


	3. Have You Ever Just Stared At It?

**The Ghost in the Machine**

Chapter Two

**"Have you ever just stared at it?"**

One of us is waiting,
    
    One side of us waiting

Smith loved the feel of ice against the side of his head. The condensation from the cold pack snaked down Smith's arm inside his sleeve forming a damp spot at his elbow. He stretched out on the long eggplant colored sofa and elevated his feet as per Kai's instructions—demands.  Silently, he stared at the ceiling tile and isolated something familiar and inexplicably comforting in its orderly grid pattern. The lights were low with the exception of green Tiffany-style lamp with an intricate serpent patterned shade. The room was comforting in the sense of déjà vu it created. The tension in his muscles began to loosen.  

Kai announced her presence by turning on the stereo and Smith cringed at the volume.  The music lacked intelligible words and was dominated by a hypnotic bass line echoing the human heart.  The rhythm made Smith feel anxious, like being trapped in an empty box with someone on the outside banging against its hollow walls.  The tension returned.  

"Here," she sat down crossed legged on the scratched coffee table and put two aspirin into his free hand.  Smith looked at the aspirin and reluctantly accepted the glass of water she offered. "Just aspirin," she winked as he eased into a sitting position. "Made by the folks at Bayer—you know they're the ones who first manufactured Heroin. They sold it as a cough syrup. Capitalist bastards."  She waited while Smith choked down the aspirin and returned the ice pack to his temple.  "I talked to Louie and he said he could drop by around eight to check on you.  He told me to not to let you doze off, lest you have an aneurysm and die."  

"I appreciate your concern," Smith reflected on his desire not to have an aneurysm. "Who is Louie?"

"Louie Patel? He's your friend not mine." Her tone betrayed irritation and she looked away. "Oh, yeah, you can't remember.  He's some quack doctor who can't get his certificate renewed. Something about being over generous with his 'script pad.  Like I said, your friend not mine."  

Smith rose up slightly, "An unlicensed doctor is coming to check on me. Why?" 

"Because you've been hit upside the head and apparently can't remember anything.  Call me a hypochondriac, but I think that's a damn good reason to seek medical attention.  Your brain's probably swelling as we speak and you're inches away from a stroke."

An uncharacteristic amount of panic surfaced in his voice, "Do you not think that it would be more fitting for me to see a licensed doctor in a hospital then?" He was not certain that he liked this person that he apparently was, yet he had no intention of allowing anything to jeopardize the only life he possessed.  

"If you look like this, the person who did this to you is probably a lot worse off and there'll be someone in a uniform waiting for you to stumble on in." Out of the corner of her eye, she noted Smith's sidearm on the kitchen counter. While on the phone with Louie, she checked the magazine and found it empty "Besides, since when do you like hospitals?"  

Silently, she maintained her position on the coffee table perching like a gargoyle over the injured man. He felt awkward under her steady gaze.  His anxiety increased.  There were things he wanted to say, but he could not remember what. He even found himself compelled to apologize to her—again, for what, he could not explain. With some effort, he pushed the anxiety aside and decided that he was not going to apologize for anything he could not remember. 

The sentinel leaned forward. 

Gently, Kai moved Smith's hand and the melting ice pack to better survey the damage.  For a moment she was tempted to haul him off to the emergency room.  A small ominous looking gash marked the beginning of a dark bruise extending from an inch above his right temple downwards towards his earlobe.  Her thoughts drifted back to a first aid class she took years ago. She touched the wound with her fingertips and Smith grabbed her wrist instinctively, if not violently. His reflex startled her, the strength in his hands proved all too familiar.  She jerked away and got to her feet. "There's part of me that thinks you're just screwing around with this whole memory thing, Michael."

He groaned, articulating his annoyance with Kai's persistent doubt.  Smith could not imagine why anyone would want to pretend to be as clueless as he was at this point. It was embarrassing. Even worse was the apparent complexity of his relationship with the younger woman with fiery red hair and a pierced nose.  It was like walking through a minefield blindfolded. "Why would I do that?"

"Why?"  She laughed. "Because you're an asshole and this is just the kind of stunt you'd pull. You walk out of here six months ago talking about this big mysterious thing with Howie.  You said you weren't going to be back.  My life gets normal and then I find you with a busted head sitting on a park bench in the middle of the day dressed like you've seen Reservoir _Dogs one too many times. You're here ten minutes and Louie Patel is already ringing the bloody phone. It's like you're connected to this great cosmic interface and you found out that I'd just about gotten over you, so you had to come back and screw every thing up."  Her hands were shaking and she stormed over to stereo for her cigarettes. "This is just too weird," she struggled with her lighter.  "But, then again I live in the fucking Bermuda Triangle of weirdness."_

Something clicked inside of Smith and he sat up. "You are irrational.  If my presence causes you the type of emotional trauma about which you speak, you should not have approached me nor brought me here. The choice belonged to you. Had you walked by, I would never have noticed." His last comment only intensified her rage.  He waited. "Why did you stop?"

"I've been putting up with your sorry ass for ten years, Michael. I know everything about you.  I know all your snide comments by heart, every dirty look, the way you sneak around.  It's my lot in life to have to deal with you.  You remind me of someone I once knew. That, and deep down I have this sick attraction to you, which is probably purely sexual and I need therapy. "  She finally managed to light her cigarette.  "At least I _found you attractive, before all this?" She motioned to his black suit. _

"Relationships based solely upon physical attraction are rarely successful and if you fail to find me attractive now, then we have no basis for a relationship and subsequently, it makes no sense for you to have me here."  Smith smirked, pleased with his logic. "Most likely you do have a latent mental illness and are in need of professional treatment."

"I owe that bastard who smacked you my eternal devotion—he knocked some brilliance into you." She ground her teeth and clenched her fists.  "If I've an illness, then you are the cause.  Congratulations, Michael, you're a bloody infection." She stormed across the room and disappeared into hallway. The bathroom door slammed, knocking a framed picture off the bookshelf.

Smith started to get up and follow, but stopped not wanting to continue the conversation nor endure the dizziness that accompanied standing.  The ice pack had melted, thus losing its charm. He tossed it onto the scratched table. As he tried to relax, he played back the conversation in his mind; the clarity and precision of the recent memory surprised him. 

When he closed his eyes, he recalled every gesture she made and every word she uttered. "He knocked some brilliance into you." Brilliance. The word struck a cord, but not the way that she meant it. His mind stumbled madly after the connection. Literally, brilliance meant a great brightness. Brightness was defined as luminosity apart from hue. Luminosity came from the word luminous.  Luminous described radiating or reflecting light. Luminous flux, the rate of transmission of luminous energy; luminous power...

His thoughts slammed into a brick wall.

"Damnit."  

I'd listen to the words he'd say

But in his voice I heard decay
    
    The plastic face forced to portray

All the insides left cold and gray

There is a place that sill remains

It eats the fear it eats the pain
    
    The sweetest price he'll have to pay

The day the whole world went away.

From, _The Day the World Went Away (NIN, Halo 13)_


	4. The Heart of the Problem

**The Ghost in the Machine**

**Chapter Three**

The Heart of the Problem
    
    Some of us are striving,

Somewhere on the mountain

Smith took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.  As he sat on the end of Kai's bed with his shirt unbuttoned and shoes off, he struggled with a powerful desire to throttle Louie Patel.  The dark mental image of the petite man gasping for his last breath with his frigid stethoscope wrapped around his skinny neck forced Smith to suppress a smile. He watched Patel with narrowed eyes and tensed each time his flesh touched him.  When Patel first began his examination, he had felt uncomfortable and by the end he was, quite literally, ready to kill him.  The fact that Patel insisted upon double-checking Smith's heart almost pushed him into a blind rage. Although he was unable to remember the most basic details of his life, he knew for certain that he did not like this man.  

"Well, I've seen worse," Patel shoved the stethoscope carelessly into his duffle bag and shrugged his shoulders.  "It's just a mild concussion—it looks bad, but no red flags."

"Mild? I have absolutely no memory of any event before noon today. No red flags there?" Smith growled and again comforted himself with the fantasy of beating the obnoxious quack to death.

"Michael," he smiled almost condescendingly. "It's an impressive hematoma, but it's not life threatening. The small laceration might leave a scar and amnesia rarely lasts for twenty-four hours." He raised a dark eyebrow suspiciously.  "You'll probably sleep it off," he tossed Smith a plastic prescription jar. "Take this, pass out on the couch and you'll be fine."  He picked up his duffle bag and left the room. 

Smith followed him.  "I thought I wasn't supposed to sleep? This is Xanax," Smith caught hold of the door as Patel opened it.  "This is an anti-anxiety medication.  I have a concussion caused by a blunt trauma to the side of my head of which I have no memory. The only anxiety I possess stems from your apparent inability to treat me.  Is there not something more appropriate you can prescribe?" 

"Get a second opinion, if it suits you, Mickey," Patel squeezed past Smith and looked towards the kitchen where Kai lurked. "The Xanax will help you calm down and get some sleep, besides I ain't got a lot of reasons to run about with a stock of anti-inflammatories—there's no money in it. I don't treat a lot of concussions.  Usually when some body hits another body upside the head like what you've got he usually finishes the job.  Bullets, stitches, painkillers and some other recreational pharmaceuticals—that's my line of work.  Take a couple of those pills, some aspirin and go to bed. I doubt you're going to die or anything."  He smiled flatly and the look in his eyes clearly revealed his total apathy. 

It was Smith's turn to slam the door and the other picture toppled from the bookcase.  

As if cued by the slamming door, Kai waltzed out of the kitchen wearing her pajamas and nursing a bottle of Harp's.  Since their earlier 'discussion' she had maintained a surly silence and throughout Patel's entire visit she had been conspicuously absent.  Now she emerged from the shadows and trailed after Smith as he stormed down the hall and into the bathroom.  Smugly, she took up a position in the doorframe to watch him obsess over his bruise in front of the mirror. 

"Do you need something?" Smith directed a cold stare at her in the mirror.  

"Nope."  Dismissively, she scraped at her fingernail polish and continued to watch him.  She then drained her beer and belched, content in her un-ladylike behavior. "What are you doing?"

Coolly, Smith redirected his attention to the foul creature in the orange and white striped oversized pajamas—and she called him an infection?  She was like a virus, a garishly dressed obscene little virus.  He smiled briefly at his cleverness and returned his attention to comparing the size of his pupils. Of course, he could not remember paying attention to the normal size of his pupils, but continued to lean into the mirror as if waiting for one of them to explode and cerebrospinal fluid run out of his ears.  "Patel is incompetent." Smith turned from the mirror and coolly turned his nose up at her appearance.   

"No shit," she shrugged.

"I could have an intracranial hemorrhage.  This could be the brief period of lucidity that precedes the onset of unconsciousness." 

"You don't know the first thing about lucidity," Her tone was foreboding, but the crooked smile returned. "Lucidity?" she snorted and tossed the beer bottle into the wastebasket. "Why don't you take your lucid self into the living room then? It would be far more convenient for me if you die on the couch."  Kai reveled in the sight of his deadpan expression and left the room.  

"You find all of this to be amusing?" Smith sat down next to her on the couch and began buttoning his shirt. "I don't." 

"I have a perverse sense of humor," she picked up her cigarettes and lighter off the coffee table. "The world I live in sucks.  Everything sucks," she shook the lighter. "You're born, you live and you die.  In between acts one and three you're beaten down a thousand times.  You get up and someone knocks you down again. I used to obsess about the futility of it all.  Then I woke up one bright rainy morning, looked out over the flowers and smog, and said fuck—it—all." She continued to shake the lighter. 

"Would you rather everything be perfect? Everyone happy and content?" 

"Hell no, I wouldn't have a damn thing to laugh at." 

Smith snatched the lighter from her, "This doesn't work because it's out of fluid." 

"Don't say that! You'll hurt its feelings." 

"I can't hurt its feelings, it's an inanimate object." Smith rolled his eyes. 

"You're a bloody inanimate object," she sneered. "I'll have you know, since you don't remember anything anyway, that this lighter is an antique. It's from the now defunct 'Heart O' the City Hotel,' a once prosperous and luxurious establishment."

"This is not an antique.  It is a valueless piece of disposable advertising from a disreputable hotel located in a portion of the city adversely affected by the suburban exodus of the mid-1950s. It is a vacate building used by cheap prostitutes and criminals." He turned the lighter over to examine the logo. 

"Oh bloody hell, Michael," She stood up, climbed over the back of the couch and seized another lighter off the sideboard the stereo sat on. "I bow down to your knowledge of dive hotels and advertising." She changed the cd and climbed back over the couch.  "So tell me, love, what's it like for you?"

"What?" 

"To not remember."

Smith raised a cautious eyebrow, "I thought you had your doubts whether my inability to remember was genuine or a fabrication." 

She smiled oddly and pointed at the lighter.  "Michael, that's your lighter.  You were one who said it was antique. Sweetheart, you don't know shit." Her smile broadened triumphantly. 

Smith's expression darkened.  "And I presume you find this all amusing?"

"No," The smile faded and she lowered her voice.  "I find it tremendously comforting," She toyed with her cigarette, but did not light it.  "It makes me feel normal." 

***

Once more Smith stretched out on the couch and focused on the ceiling tile. The cd ended and the room grew quiet and the shadows drew closer.  His head felt better, but no thanks to Louie Patel. Instead, he discovered that once he found other things to think about, the pain diminished. Kai gave him a lot to think about.  Unfortunately, as the throbbing decreased it was replaced by a persistent ringing in his ears.  He debated turning the stereo back on.  The ringing was maddening; he yawned exaggeratedly and took some deep breaths.   The exhaustion of the day had finally caught up with him. He was tired, but not sleepy, yet he closed his eyes anyway and allowed his mind to drift. Trancelike, the sensation of falling enveloped him.

_"Brilliance." _

His body temperature dropped dramatically.  

_"Brilliance."  _

His pulse and breathing slowed. 

"Brilliance" 

Instinctively, he raised his hand to an earpiece that was not there.

_ "Brilliance." _

The ringing became more pronounced, more distinct. 

_"Smith."_

Smith's hand dropped and he wrenched his blue eyes open.  Frantically, he struggled to his feet, despite the nauseating dizziness.  He clutched his chest and tried to keep from hyperventilating—it wasn't ringing he heard, it was voices.  

The feel of the action

The seed of the action

Will drag you down

From_ Motion (Front 242, Up Evil)_


	5. Can't quite put my finger on it...

**The Ghost in the Machine**

Chapter Four 

**"Can't quite put my finger on it…"**

One part of us keeps giving away

Keeps giving away, keeps giving away, giving away

Smith stood naked under the shower with his head bowed, letting the cold water run down the back of his neck. Against the blue tile on either side of the showerhead, he pressed his slender hands flat and his fingertips unconsciously clung to the grout.  Slowly, he shifted his weight, the muscles in his back and shoulders briefly tightened as he leaned closer to the wall resting his distinctive forehand against the tile. His movement remained elegant, even as he stood soaked, shivering and distracted.  Vulnerable. Looking down into the chrome tub fixtures, he focused on his reflection—the reflection of an Adonis-like statue encased in pale flawless flesh.   

For the two hours he had stood immovable in the cold current thinking and staring into his own eyes.  His deep blue pools contained neither weakness nor fear, but instead the stoicism of a man backed into a corner and willing to die rather than submit.  Undoubtedly, confusion dominated Smith's emotions, but he had no intention of giving into madness.  He knew he had to remain as rational as possible in order to deal with the situation. Rationality proved substantially difficult.  The moment Smith relaxed his mind, the instant he dropped his guard, he began to hear _it and he knew that the second he closed his eyes he would see __it. _

What Smith originally believed to be a simple tinnitus had evolved into a raging cacophony of voices rising and sinking in an endless sea of pulsating green radiance.  He knew the color without seeing it.  How he knew was inexplicable, but it was the only constant he found to cling to in his clouded mind—the green glow of a far away sea.  The voices, some only inches away and others infinitely remote, were floating bits of debris in the green water.  Although initially quite disturbing, the voices no longer caused Smith alarm, despite that he knew they should.  They were neutral. The voices did not recognize him, did not acknowledge him.  The voices paid him no heed.  He could hear them, yet they could not or would not hear him.  Their connection had been severed.  

If the voices could be described as debris on a great green sea, what truly concerned Smith was what lurked under the radiant waters. The Leviathan.  Smith originally thought it was the echo of the voices, and then he realized that the voices were the echo of it.  Infinite, incomprehensible and monolithic, it was omnipresent—the blood coursing through the veins and the body, which held it.

_It spoke with voice of a god and a demon.  _

Less than three hours ago, although it felt like three centuries and three days, he had strayed into its lair and heard it address its servant.  He heard something, which he should have not.  Now, it knew of his presence.  It was aware.  He knew no 'Smith,' yet regardless if the syllable had been hurled at him—it recognized him.  Now, it waited to drown him in its dark waters.  Icarus had flown too close to the sun and would fall to the sea.  

Was it malevolent? He did not know.  It called to him and Smith was drawn to it, yet he did not know whether it was the compulsion of the prodigal son to seek out the forgiving father or a moth to a flame.  He had to find out more.  He desperately needed to know who he was, but not in the superficial sense of name, birthday and favorite color.  Smith needed to know _what he was before attempting to find out __what it was.  Of course, Smith knew it was only a matter of time before exhaustion claimed him and cast him into the sea, ready or not.  _

***

Daylight bled through the curtains and infected the room with a jaundice colored haze.  The rosy-fingered dawn of classical literature was a crass deception cultivated by hypocritical fools with boarded up windows.  The clock radio, purposefully positioned out of reach, broadcasted the intellectual vomit of an insipid morning call-in program.  The pop music and cheery voices provided the impetus for Kai to throw herself out of bed and restore order to her universe by silencing the radio.  She pulled on a striped bathrobe over her striped pajamas and searched for her Ray Bans.  It was a gross understatement to say that she hated mornings.  

Lethargically, she drug herself into kitchen to the coffeemaker, the only programmable piece of technology in her house that she knew how to operate, as well as her only electronic device with both a surge protector and a back-up power source. The overpriced feat of German engineering had never let her down—she liked that about machines. Conversely, she was also the same woman who beat her Palm Pilot to death with her shoe on the steps of the government building in which she worked.   Kai was anything, if inconsistent. 

Through half closed eyes she poured her first cup and sat down across from Smith.   Her head hit the table with a resounding thud.  "Are you ill?" Smith's voice was devoid of emotion.  

Kai looked up and sneered.  "Go to hell." She articulated each word icily. 

Smith returned her salutation with a sneer of his own and turned his attention back to the book he was reading. Secretly, he enjoyed in her caustic personality. He would have despised her any other way. 

"How's your head?" She paused to look at his bruise as she went for her second cup.  "It looks fantastic."  

Smith touched his temple noting that there was no pain, he had forgotten completely about the injury.  "Better than before," he suppressed the surprise in his voice deftly.  Yesterday, he had been in abject agony and today he had to be reminded of his injury. 

"Is your memory any clearer?" She scooped a stack of folders off the counter and dumped them on to the table.  Absently, she began to leaf through the pages of a fatigue green portfolio.

"It is not," Smith stole a glance at the portfolio.  "What are you doing?" 

"I get to work from home for a week," she smiled broadly and pushed her sunglasses up on her head. "A pair of subversive wackos dropped by on Monday, waltzed through security with a thousand guns, dropped a nuclear weapon down the elevator shaft, stole a helicopter and destroyed an entire floor of the building I work in." Smith looked up as the weight of what she said registered. 

"What?" He had been only half-listening to her, his attention instead fixed on the portfolio. 

"It's been the leading news story for the past week. I was interviewed by CNN."  There was a strange pride in her voice.  "Now they're redoing background checks and limiting security clearances, so we've all been sent home or to therapy.  I fear the days of dodging out early for lunch are over."

Smith pulled his eyes away from the portfolio. "What is that you do?" 

"I do research and write dull reports about effective mass communication strategies.  In the private sector it would be a high paying and prestigious job, but I work for the government so I'm essentially a poorly paid propagandist.  With the exception of the whole terrorist thing, it's an incredibly boring job where nothing exciting happens save the occasional shit fit my boss throws." She bit the end of her thumbnail and reflected on the papers in front of her. 

"If you're not content, why do you not seek employment else where?" 

"Not content? What makes you think that?  I love my job I find it quite funny.  Do you have any idea how little work goes on there?  I take multiple coffee breaks, extensive lunches, I've smoked in my office for years, I don't know what the dress code is and I have the most incredible Internet connection on Earth—I haven't _bought a cd since I started working there ten years ago.  All I do is sit back and compile information."  She got up for her third cup.  "In the greater scheme of things I am but a cog in the all powerful machine and I would have it no other way, unless I found a higher paying job at night, that required less work and came with a corner office." _

"It doesn't suit your personality," Smith took the opportunity while her back was turned to check the subject heading on the portfolio, _Persuasion and Active Questioning Strategies. "Had you said you were a street performer, I would not have been surprised.  In fact, I don't think I would have been surprised had you said that __you were a subversive terrorist.  You have an apparent problem with authority."  _

"Really?" Kai sat down.  "I don't buy any of the shit the government shovels, even though I do a lot of the shoveling myself. It gets to be a very dangerous if you do. My office handles psychological warfare at its most bureaucratic, so it's entirely harmless. But, there are people who work there in offices without numbers who don't have bloody names—they tend to buy into the crap."  She looked up at Smith and for a brief moment a strange look of recognition flashed in her emerald colored eyes and then vanished. "I'll buy into it all and be the most gung-ho person around there the day they give me prime office space up in the helicopter shooting galleries and start calling me Agent Thoreau as opposed to 'hey you!'"  

"You're quite liberal with your loyalties.  I assume this all feeds back into your personal epistemology of 'Fuck it?'" Smith paused for her reaction and contented himself with thinking back to the virus insult he had constructed for her. Garishly dressed, red headed, obscene, little, _shifty virus—so the etiology grew and Smith continued to be quite pleased with his cleverness_

"Michael, I believe you've gotten smarter."  Her sweet smile dripped sarcasm. "But, sweetie, I would like to remind you ever-so-delicately that you were the one who taught me all that I know about 'liberal loyalties.'"  A darkness settled her eyes with which Smith was becoming all too familiar. "Rob Peter to pay Paul, eh?  Michael, you are the crown prince of the double-cross.  If you don't get your memory back, you'll go nuts trying to sort out just who you work for this week.  One false step and you'll—" It was her turn for the dramatic pause.  "Get your head bashed in."  

Smith folded his hands together and rested his elbows on the table.  He leveled a cold look at her and raised an eyebrow.  He said nothing; instead leaving her to her own intimidation of him.  In the few, but volatile, conversations they had shared he learned that she became defensive anytime the talk strayed too close to the nature of the past.  If pushed, she would shove. If left to her own devices she would inadvertently speak volumes.  Smith was no fool. She may have been writing on persuasive communication, but he was practicing it.  

If she wanted to play games Smith would gladly comply, but they were going to play with his rules. Wordlessly, he stood up and slid his book off the table leaving Kai with her paperwork.  She was spoiling for a fight and he would not give it to her. He wanted the green portfolio.  He knew he had seen it before.  He would wait until she got up and went to take her shower and then he would take the folder. Time was not a luxury he could afford to waste, but he had to under the circumstances.  Kai was not going to tell him anything concrete without a fight.  He did not have time to argue with her and his patience was running thin.  Each passing second brought him closer to the haunting green presence and every second wasted left him more unprepared to face it.  

Smith had seen the portfolio before.  In fact, with some certainty, he believed he could visualize its contents.  Of course, he had no idea _where he had seen the portfolio or the circumstances connected surrounding it. However, from Kai's limited comments and behavior, he assumed Michael might have seen a few dozen such files—across shiny Formica tables with individuals concerned about 'active questioning.' _

Within the hour, Smith had the file in his hands. He opened it carefully, recognizing the crease in the cover and the color of the ink on the label. The file was composed of memos requesting research in specific areas.  Out of the eighty-three memos, Smith regrettably recognized only one. Had he seen two portfolios?  Why would he have seen two?  He laid the memo aside and closed the folder as he heard the bathroom open.  

Once he was certain of Kai's whereabouts, Smith went into the living room and removed the memo from his pocket.  Glancing once over his shoulder, he unfolded it and began to read it closely.  The memo was from an individual identified as S/J/B and it concerned situation in which a man brought in for questioning "made a gesture popularly interpreted as obscene" to the lead inquisitor.  The memo's sterile prose proceeded to inquire about appropriate response options and the prevalence of such rebellious behavior along generational lines.  

Smith closed his eyes trying to remember and a small smile slowly graced his lips.  The memory surfaced gradually and in the form of sensations as opposed to specific images.  He recalled the warmth of the room, the sickening yellow light and the hard chair.  He knew there had been three officials there, but could not remember anything about them aside from their presence. The nature of the meeting proved elusive as well, but he remembered with an astounding clarity giving the agent the finger.  

It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
    
    It's the end of the world as we know it 

And I feel fine. 

From _It's the End of the World as We Know It (REM, Document)_


	6. Lucid Dreams

**The Ghost in the Machine**

**Chapter Five**

**Lucid Dreams******

One of us is waiting

Out of body" experiences (OBEs) are personal experiences during which people feel as if they are perceiving the physical world from a location outside of their physical bodies. At least 5 and perhaps as many as 35 of every 100 people have had an OBE at least once in their lives.  (Levitan and LaBerge) 

Menacing gray clouds gathered as the afternoon wore on. Rain threatened and the occasional rumble of thunder pushed its way down through the amassing cumulonimbi.  Kai pulled the warped green door shut behind her and stopped on the stoop to put on her headphones and dark sunglasses.  Deliberately, she stepped on to a sidewalk covered in crime scene outlines and pictures of UFOs—the neighbor's imaginative children were on the rampage with chalks again. After adjusting the weight of her satchel, she headed towards the subway station.  

Dressed in somber colors, Kai blended in and became indistinguishable in the crowd of people waiting on the platform.  In the five o'clock rush, she was no more than just one of millions—a number, a warm body.  The train came to a screeching halt assailing the crowd with a searing artificial wind.  Its doors opened and a small number escaped as the larger crowd pushed its way in mindlessly. 

Dutifully, Kai assumed a place between the other bodies and took the handgrip.  Her individuality vanished as she was subsumed into the barely sentient mass of humanity trapped inside the pulsating metal tube roaring down the tracks.  The emotionless men and women in dark suits stared inertly ahead or focused mechanically on newspapers.  The train's hypnotic vibration weakened as the next station approached.  People began to shift and brace themselves for the abrupt halt and the onslaught of another faceless crowd. 

Subways made Kai terribly claustrophobic.

A tall healthy looking man in a black suit entered and the crowd parted wordlessly.  Kai moved as well to give him some space and quickly glanced up into his clear blue eyes.  "Father," she nodded to the priest and turned her music down a bit.  The rugged looking man returned her nod and she disappeared back into the collective unconscious of the rush hour not noticing his continuing attention. 

At the Giger Street station Kai pushed her way to the exit and up the crowded stairs to the street level.  Emerging from the electric rumble and heat, the petite woman with flaming red hair stood out boldly against the backdrop of the crowds marching downwards.  An ominous sky loomed above, now darker and threatening a downpour, and Kai vehemently cursed her perpetually forgotten umbrella.  It was the greatest of ironies.  She had a photographic memory of the darkest and most disturbing moment she had ever witnessed and yet forgot her umbrella on a daily basis.  A smirk snaked across her lips at her own idiosyncrasies and she marched across the street.  

"Hi Kathleen," a young man with acne smiled and lowered his eyes nervously as Kai took off her coat.  Pathetically, he ducked his head and stepped backwards from the refreshments table. Monty's social skills had not been up to par since his alien abduction.

"Monty," Kai acknowledged him and filled a restaurant-service-style cup with restaurant-service-style coffee and made a straight line for the coveted 'comfy-chair.' It seemed that either the group was increasing or the meeting room was shrinking.  Kai had adjusted her normally laconic schedule to compensate for the dearth of comfortable chairs after the time she was ten minutes late had to sit on the floor for two and half hours. 

"Hello Kai," an older woman wearing an exquisite red sari sat down next to her.  "How are you doing?" 

"Fair enough," Kai began to fight with the Heart O' the City lighter. "Yourself, Mira?" After three tries she got her cigarette lit.

"As well as ever," she folded her sienna colored arms and surveyed the people shuffling into the room. She brought her attention back to Kai, "You're holding out, what's up?" 

"You really want to know?  Michael's back," she waited for the surprise to register. "He's back. Found him on a park bench with his head bloodied and he can't remember a fooking thing." She avoided Mira's look.  "He's sleeping on the couch."

"Shit, I thought he went off that greasy bastard Howie?  What's with the memory thing, sounds like a Michael put-on, if you ask me." Mira glanced at her watch as a tall man entered the room leading a small child.  

"I thought it was too, but he got hit quite squarely and got one hell of a concussion.  It's not a put on," Kai raised her eyebrows. "I've been testing him. He couldn't get in the front door, didn't know this was his," she held up the lighter. "And it's just not him."  She lowered her voice.  "It's like there's a stranger in my house." 

"You'll think stranger when the bastard hits you," Mira shook her head. 

"He's not going to get away with any of that ever again.  I know Michael.  There's something different in his eyes." Kai looked at her watch and out the window, the periodic ritual of lucid dreamers, and the tall man clapped his hands softly. The private conversations stopped. 

"You are not dreaming," his melodious voice intoned. "It is 5:45 pm and there are clouds in the sky.  Welcome," he breathed. Paternally, he patted the child's shoulder.  "Survivors, this is Adam and he wants to share a story with us."  Kindly, he pushed the small child with large eyes forward and the room grew deathly still.  "Adam, tell us what happened to you." 

"Charlie, our cat, climbed the tree at Mrs. Hemple's house and my sister was crying.  So," he turned and looked for reassurance from the tall man.  "I climbed the tree, but he was too high up and I got scared cause the wind was blowing. I tried to get down, but I slipped and fell out of the tree."  He looked around the room and shrugged his shoulders.  "And I hit my head," he touched the back of his skull for emphasis.  "Everything went real dark and I thought I was dead.  I opened my eyes, but couldn't see at first.  It was like I was under water, but the water was all heavy and warm. It got up my nose.  I tried to open my eyes again, because I thought I was choking on something.  Then I did and all I could see was red light—like when you put your hand over a flashlight," He spoke with a disturbing matter-of-factness. "Then I heard a humming noise like my dad's lawnmower and felt like I was floating.  I tried to move my hand, but there was something like a snake biting it. Everything got dark again and I woke up under the tree."  He met the room's silence with defensiveness.  "A fireman was there and they took me to the hospital.  I tried to tell my parents what I saw, but they said it wasn't real. They got mad cause I kept talking about it at school and made me go to a doctor."  His forehead wrinkled and a stoniness settled on his features. "It _was real. I saw it. It even smelled—like the beach." The tall man rose and put his hands protectively on the boy's shoulders. _

A patient smile.

"There's no one in this room who doesn't believe you, Adam. We have all had the same OBE after a similar injury, although not all of us were climbing trees," He motioned for the boy to take a seat and addressed the room. "Each of us has seen the red room, heard the hum, felt the warm heavy water and smelled saline."  He looked slowly meeting the eyes of each of the group's twenty-three members, before resting his eyes on Adam.  "We don't know what it was that you saw, Adam.  Was it a dream?  Is this the dream?" The members of the group involved in lucid dreaming exercises instinctively glanced at their watches.  "Were we taken away?" Monty shifted uncomfortably.  "Was it heaven? Was it hell?"  His eyes grew distant.  "We don't know, Adam, but I can promise you that you'll never be the same again." 

Kai watched despondently as the rain pounded against window drinking her coffee and avoiding Monty's adolescent flirtations.  She wished she had her umbrella.  The session was dragging and she turned her thoughts homeward and wondered how her houseguest was amusing himself.  When she left he was sitting in the living room reading, she could not remember ever seeing Michael read anything. A soft hand touched her shoulder and directed her thoughts back to the meeting. 

"Kai, I was hoping that you'd share tonight.  Some of the new members have expressed an interest in the more…umm, interesting details of your experience." The tall bald man with distant eyes coaxed. 

"Alsace, we're already running over," Kai looked in her coffee cup for excuses.  "Come on, there's got to—" she broke off and acquiesced.

"You can do this," he clapped his hand and motioned for all to sit.  "I feel that you _need to do this right now." He took her hand and led her back to her seat.  "Survivors of the Red Room, you are not dreaming.  It is 7:20 pm and it is raining."  The double-checking of watches took place. "We have one last experience to hear of tonight.  Kathleen Thoreau, who joined our group years ago from one of my lucidity studies, has agreed to share her story once more for the benefit of those of you who have not heard it." Twenty-four pairs of eyes looked intently at Kai as she stood up, took a deep breath and tried to summon her thick wall of defenses. She did not like to share with the group, despite how well she thought she knew them.  Since she joined the group she had been apprehensive of sharing. A nagging feeling of suspicion resided in the back of her mind.  Something was not right._

"I'm Kathleen Thoreau, but everyone I know calls me Kai.  They've always called me Kai." She smiled at Mira and wished she could trade places with her.  "When I was about twenty-five years old I fell off a ladder and started having recurring nightmares, shortly thereafter, the kind that just loop—like a record skipping."  She focused on the tall windows across the room.  "They were very frightening chase scenarios and I couldn't go to sleep. I finally started seeing a doctor for sleep disorders and he sent me to a memory specialist who tried to figure out where the dreams were coming from." She did not talk about these things with anyone.  "Anyhow, the specialist did some tests and put me under hypnosis, which really fucked everything up—oh, sorry about that," she blushed and lost her resolve.  "Under hypnosis, and I've viewed the tapes, I remembered the red room and the doctors thought it was weird and dismissed it.  I went to other therapy groups and eventually I got in to lucid dream therapy and met Alasce." Kai started to sit down.  

The tall man sighed and gestured for her to continue, "Kai, slow down and tell us about what you saw."

"Right," she stood back up and breathed. "I saw two places," the room grew smaller and she wanted to bolt.  "I remember a loud place that was dark with a green glow about it.  There were a lot of people there, because I heard voices.  No one spoke directly to me. It was like hearing the sound of a baseball game from a block away.  The green went away, everything went black and then I had the stock experience that everyone talks about, except I remember being very scared." She exhaled a deep breath.  

***

Smith stood in front of the bathroom mirror and raised his middle finger defiantly, "…I give you the finger and you give me my phone call." There was something graceless about the gesture.  Despite the fact he had no memory, he knew this was not something he would do.  It felt wrong. Additionally, the words did not sound right with Smith's characteristically slow articulation and habit of stressing pronouns.  Yet, he could clearly remember sitting at the table surrounded by three men and directing the obscene gesture at the agent across from him. He tried it again with his left hand.  "…and you give me my phone call. Damnit," he rolled his eyes and looked at his extended middle finger as if it were a separate entity.  

Kai had mentioned that he was dressed differently and alluded to his looking like a character from the film _Reservoir Dogs.  Smith smirked at the thought.  He liked the way he looked with the exception of the bruise.  It was possible, he conceded, that his appearance might have a bearing on the plausibility of the finger issue. A frown surfaced.  He ran his hands through his hair and unbuttoned the second button of the denim shirt he was wearing.  He raised his right hand, "…I give you the finger—That's great.  Now, I look like an middle-aged frat boy with an attitude," he growled and smoothed his hair back into place.  A third of Kai's closet consisted of his clothing—Michael's clothing—and Smith was beginning to question the rebelliousness of a person who shopped almost exclusively at the Gap.  _

Smith dismissed the finger memory as false lead for the time being.  He was running out of time on two fronts.  Throughout the day he continued to hear the voices and feel the unnamed presence.  It took focus, but Smith managed to suppress the distant voices and push the others to the back of his mind.  However, the feeling of the radiant presence coupled with an unusual awareness of his surroundings increased throughout the day and eluded his control.  Lines grew sharper, lighting became more consistent and his perspective began to change, it was like the world was fading into a three-dimensional blueprint cast in a disturbing green glow.  

On the other front there was the virus eating away at his patience.  Kai.  She mentioned a meeting and vanished around 5:00 promising to return by 9:00.  Already, it was 7:30 and Smith had not found what he was looking for.  He paused outside her bedroom door and the thought hit him.  How could he be certain that it was 7:30 when he was not wearing a watch?  

Kai owned ninety-two different self-help books and Smith was not surprised. Most of the titles dealt with dreams, posttraumatic stress syndrome, bad relationships or some combination of the three.  On the nightstand was a journaling book entitled_ Listmaking as a Way to Self-Discovery.  Smith picked it up and sat down on the edge of Kai's bed, justifying himself with the logic that if the journal was secret then Kai should have hidden it better. Unfortunately, he had been correct in his assumption that she was not the type of person to keep a diary.  The pages were blank. Irritably, he snapped the book closed and shoved it back on the nightstand knocking a postcard to the floor.  He stooped down and picked it up. The postcard had never been mailed.  _

_Michael, thanks for a fantastic last evening.  You're so irresistible—it must be those gorgeous green eyes of yours—so unforgettable. By the way, a pair of government boys dropped by wanting to know if I'd seen you.  I recognized the gents from Assholes Incorporated, as they're my superiors.  YOU STUPID SON-OF-A-BITCH! I don't know what you're into, but cost me my job and I'll rip those twinkling green orbs from your head with a pair of ice tongs. _

Smith turned the card over in his hands, "My eyes are blue." 

With eyes sewn shut I still can see all that is surrounding me.

I end up somewhere, somewhere between...

Between a dream and motionless reality, will I forever lie? 

From_ Dream of Waking  (AFI, The Art of Drowning EP)_


	7. And this is how...

The Ghost in the Machine Chapter Six 

**"And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time"******
    
    One more number's waiting

The rain soaked asphalt reflected and distorted the luminescence of the city and enveloped the world in a mercurial glow. In the distance the storm rumbled angrily in its retreat and the sky overhead began to clear.  The moist night air reeked of ozone and vegetable decay and an oppressive silence descended.  All that remained of the storm were vigilant gray vapors; sentinels monitoring the disorder of the stars—the rearguard of the passing tempest and the vanguard for the one to come.  

Kai moved briskly along the slippery pavement drawn to the artificial warmth under the steel branches of the streetlights.  In the deserted street, her footfalls echoed the march of an invisible army.  She cursed her leather-soled shoes and the subway's malfunction. Her muscles ached from the icy dampness of the night.  

The blue darkness rejoiced in her dilemma.  

Kai breathed in the cold air and wished she could exhale the anxious demons wallowing in her stomach. The silence was agony.  Had the world died?  She strained her hearing and focused on the sound of the harbor a block away.  The gentle mossy waters soothed her and gave her the strength to press onward.  She turned towards them. Ahead of her the streetlights died unexpectedly leaving behind only a dim phosphorescent glow.  She set her jaw and allowed her pace to quicken.  Fear washed over her and she struggled against the desire to bolt.  

A tin can rang out as it bounced down the sidewalk piercing the silence.  

Kai did not turn to see who kicked the can.  She knew. Giving in to her fears, she bolted towards the harbor.  He was not alone, but Kai was much faster.  Her pounding heart reverberated in her head.  Madly, she pushed herself harder focusing all of her energy on speed.  She was faster.  She was stronger. She would reach the harbor before him.  

The laws of time dissolved as she fell.  Her foot slid backwards, her center of gravity shifted and the slippery pavement rose up to embrace her.  Wildly, she threw her hands in front of her to keep her head from hitting the street and the uneven texture of the asphalt tore her flesh.  Her weight had barely touched the ground before she wrenched herself to her feet and threw her body forward struggling to regain forward momentum.  The edge of the docks loomed just out of reach.

A smell of saline filled her nostrils and the warm breeze called out to her.  The bullet entered through her left shoulder and ripped its way into her chest cavity.  Defiantly, she remained standing.

Angry painful tears clouded her eyes and a clammy coldness crept into her face.  "Turn around, Kai," she mumbled through clenched teeth.  Her body grew numb and she did not move. "Face him," she growled at herself.  "You're better than this. Turn damnit." Rigidly, she turned and met the eyes of the gunman and his partner.  She set her jaw and threw her shoulders back against the pain.  Blood soaked her white shirt.  "You fools! This is not real," she taunted the men and the blue moon.  

"For you it is," The dark man raised a cylindrical object. Darkness. 

The laws of time dissolved as she fell.  Her foot slid backwards, her center of gravity shifted and the slippery pavement rose up to embrace her.  Wildly, she threw her hands in front of her to keep her head from hitting the street and the uneven texture of the asphalt tore her flesh…

_Wake up. _

Kai's eyes opened and she lurched out of one nightmare into another. "What in the hell are you doing?"  She stumbled backwards off her bed, where Smith calmly sat with his legs crossed and hands on his knees.  The pale moonlight bathed his triangular face in an evil shadow and a vicious smile played at the corners of his lips. "Michael," Kai backed defensively towards the window. "Why are you in here?"   

"Sit down, Kai," he motioned to the bed.  Knowingly, he followed her stare to the door and looked back into her eyes and shook his head. "Sit down, Kai." His opened handed motion became less of an invitation. Wordlessly, Kai sat down, but first stole a glance at the clock.

"You are not dreaming," his voice was a dark parody of everything she considered comforting.  "We must talk."

"Michael," she breathed nervously. "It's three a.m., perhaps we can talk in a few hours."  She tried unsuccessfully to regain her composure and take control of the situation.   

"Actually, its three minutes after," he brought his hands together and steeped his fingers. "Kai," her name slipped off his lips like a threat. "I feel as though you have not been very forthcoming with me." 

"What are you talking about, Michael," she sat up straighter, trying to mimic his assertive posture. 

"Who am I? And, I want to you to be specific," his voice was frightfully level. "You will tell me.  I'm finished playing games." His tone made it clear that he would not tolerate anything less than total compliance. 

She regarded him cautiously.  "You're Michael. I've known you for nearly ten years. Six months ago you went off with your friend Howie.  We had a fight. The night before, you said something about a tea party—the Mad Hatter's. I guessed you were doing drugs. You left and then I found you sitting in the park" she looked at her hands. 

"Who is Howie?"  Smith knew she was holding back.

"Howie is one of your weird friends. He's wild-eyed and paranoid.  He looks at me like I'm the devil incarnate and asks me bizarre questions—like he's trying to trap me.  I despise him," She brought her knees up to her chest and wrinkled her brow.  "He was forever saying stupid shit like, 'Don't trust anyone,' 'They're everyone and no one,' and always talking about black helicopters and conspiracies.  It struck me as strange that you'd gravitate towards him, but then I realized that he was not as unlike you as I thought."  A siren wailed in the distance. 

"What am I like?" Smith softened his voice. 

"Generally, you're abusive and abrasive.  We fight all the time and you don't play fair.  You were an asshole," Kai's characteristic bluntness erupted. 

"You've established that," Smith tilted his head.

"When I first met you, you were just a lowly programmer for Minotaur, an internet security company.  By the end," she eulogized. "You were no better than Howie. You started keeping strange hours and would disappear for weeks on end.  People called here looking for you and would leave the most ridiculous messages and names.  You stopped sleeping and would sit up all hours of the night just staring at your computer. If I came near you'd freak out and start closing windows.  At first, I thought you were a porn junkie or something, but instead it was just pages and pages of code." She exhaled as if she were being freed from a great weight and began to toy with the hem of the sheet.

"On the day you left three men came by looking for you," she began again. "It was very surreal. I think it happened," her eyes grew distant. "I opened the door before they knocked.  The shortest of the three smiles and says, 'Kai' and the other two look at him like he's just broken every law known to humanity. It was like a dream. The one in the middle," she paused and a look of uncertainty swept across her face.  "I can't remember much about him and for the life of me I have no idea what he looked like.  Anyway, the one in the middle said something cryptic, pushed his way in, nosed around and they were all gone in less than ten minutes."  Her eyes looked at his shadow.  "I never thought I would see you again." 

"Why?" Smith knew the three men of whom she spoke. 

"I said it was all very surreal.  My life is surreal," She laced her fingers and put her hands behind her head. "Those men were an intersection between my hallucinations and my reality.  They are the vultures perching in the shooting galleries.  Like killer angels, they swooped down to tear you out of my life.  I knew you would be dead by the end of the day, but did not mourn your passing and here you are."  The distance in her voice was immeasurable.  

Carefully, he reached over her and switched on the lamp. Kai remained motionless.  Smith did not understand what she was saying and was not even certain to whom she was speaking.  He knelt beside her for a moment before sitting back down, this time closer.  

"Kai?" Smith did not have to try to make his voice softer, less intimidating, it just was. She looked through him.  "What color are my eyes?" 

Her face mirrored that of a creature brought to the brink of death a thousand times.  Terror melted into resignation and she closed her eyes.  "Don't make me say it," she whispered.  "I won't say it," her voice was nearly inaudible.  She clung to him with the intensity that one clings to superstition or religion. 

Unknowing what to do, Smith held her silently and stared at the radium glow of another clock on the bookcase. It was old and broken. Why keep a broken clock?  A frown crossed his lips and he sighed. He would have rather had her call him names and swear at him.  Gently, he ran his fingers through her hair and unconsciously pressed his lips to the top of her skull.  

Time stood still according to the broken clock. She finally dozed in his arms and he wanted nothing more than to be alone.  Delicately, he slipped his arm from behind her and edged off the bed.  Her tired eyes opened, "Tell me this is all a dream…please?" 

Smith stopped and looked into her troubled eyes. Never had he experienced such an overwhelming and dark feeling of déjà vu.  He touched her cheek and stepped back.  "I promise you," sympathy crept into eyes. "This is all just a dream.  Nothing here is real."  

***

Smith sank down in the green leather chair resting his bare feet against the coffee table.  He pressed his hands to his temples and closed his eyes.  Part of him wanted to be alone, yet another stronger part of him reached out against his will to _it.  The room was still and the voices no more than a distant murmur—too distant. Straining to hear them, he realized that he took comfort in the ebb and flow of the thousand thoughts.  He clenched his fists pressing his fingernails into his palms, angry with himself for seeking solace in psychotic behavior.  On the table the bottle of Xanax taunted him.  He picked it up and mulled over the label.  Smith smirked and emptied two pills into his hand, swallowing them without any water. _

In the green shadows, he rose to his feet and moved to the window.  Night was fading and the sky grew gray with the approach of an overcast dawn. Smith leaned into the window and pressed his head against cool glass.  Slowly, he raised his eyes and focused on the pale luminescence of the streetlight.  The mild green glow of the artificial light was intoxicating.  Smith straightened and continued to be transfixed on the light. 

"Brilliance."

The proximity and strength of the voice startled him and he leapt backwards from the window.  Smith lost his balance seconds before he lost consciousness and hit the floor solidly.  

Now I lay my head

To sleep

Pray the Lord for

Me to keep

Distorted vision
    
    Cloud my eyes

Even sleep can't

Hide the lies

From _Unknown Dreams (Front Line Assembly, Implode)_


	8. Night Hawks

The Ghost in the Machine Chapter Seven Night Hawks 

Where's your revolution plan?

Where's your need to make a stand

Hardwood floors are two things: hard and wooden.  Smith lay stretched out where he had collapsed six hours earlier, his sharp blue eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling.  He had been awake for forty-five minutes, but had not moved.  Mindlessly, he rose to his feet, cursed the day and rubbed his head for clarity.  

It had been possibly the most anti-climatic experience of his life.  There had been no great revelation, only a change in perspective. The radiant leviathan barely acknowledged his presence and brushed him aside like a bothersome child.  The voice that appeared behind him as he lost consciousness returned and granted him only two cryptic pieces of information: "Wrong side of the table" and "1200 hours. Hopper Park." He anticipated an epiphany and all he got was a blind date.

He may not have received the answer he was looking for, yet Smith felt different.  Despite the perplexity of the situation, he was relaxed.  For the first time in three days, he was comfortable.  The cockiness returned to his posture, the fluidity to his stride and an arrogant sense of superiority permeated his whole being. Could he remember anything to compare it with, he might conclude he felt "normal."  Smith rooted the return of his self-confidence in a childlike security that all would be explained to him and he would accept it.  

The highlighter squeaked and pools of purple ink bled through the pages.  Kai's eyes focused intently on an invisible point in front of the refrigerator and the world around her ceased to exist.  She gripped the marker tightly in her fist and the coffee maker was switched off.  As windows to her soul, Kai's eyes looked inward to a dark and foreboding place.  The marker slid backwards and forwards over the page like the shuttle of a loom. 

Smith reclaimed his black suit.  Michael or not, he could not bring himself to wear khaki in public. A crimson smear of blood stained his shirt and there was not another white one in the closet, bright pink and black being his only options.  It was a choice between wearing something inspired by the color of Pepto Bismal and looking like a bookie during business hours.  Smith opted for the latter and abandoned the tie, not wishing to go for the complete _Goodfellas look.  Mindful of the time, he glanced in the mirror over Kai's dresser and ran his hands through his damp auburn hair.  No visible trace remained of the bruise. The miraculous recovery did not surprise him any more than the voices in his head. _

Then he remembered.  "Wrong side of the table." 

He knelt down and retrieved the IMI Desert Eagle .44 he had found under the bed the night before. As he turned it over in his hands he recognized the government serial number engraved on the left hand side of the barrel: SPOO.70858.04. The magazine contained seven rounds. He was familiar with the 4.5-pound handgun and it fit his hand naturally. He holstered it and made a mental note that the weapon needed cleaning.  

It was all coming together. Smith was beginning to understand and smiled gleefully as he realized how wrong Kai had been.  Michael was not a loathsome criminal caught up in underhanded dealings.  Michael was part of the system—an integral part of a flawlessly organized system. He played an indispensable role in serving justice to those who would threaten disorder.  There was no more noble or selfless calling that Smith could imagine. Kai had implied that Michael was a criminal because she was jealous that she did not serve as important of a function. She was nothing more than a propagandist.  He was so much more.  Undoubtedly, that was the source of their difficulties, that and he believed she was quite insane. 

***

"Planning on coming back?" Kai materialized from the kitchen as Smith slipped his jacket off the coat rack and pulled it on before she saw the gun.  He turned and regarded her evenly. 

"That is my intention," his face betrayed no emotion and his voice was flat.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," she responded automatically.  The deep dark circles stole the richness of her eyes and the youthfulness of her face. "Are you coming back?"

"I am coming back," he did not try to suppress his annoyance.   

Smith paid no heed to the boys stretched out on the sidewalk attempting to reanimate the smeared chalk art.  He dismissed their efforts as futile; it was only a matter of time before another storm washed it away completely. The gray day rose up around him like a cradle of wet concrete and steel. Dense dark clouds overpowered the pale sun, despite its efforts to break free. Smith paid no heed to the sun.  

***

A ghost draped in pitch moved down the middle of the crowded sidewalk.  It was an otherworldly creature personifying the panoply of two extremes in a gray and apathetic world.  It possessed an unnatural elegance in the evenness of its long stride.  Each footfall was deliberate, calculated, and certain—the walk of a being incapable of taking a misstep. People obediently moved out of the way, not wishing to attract its attention and not knowing why.  

***

Waiting at the crosswalk to Hopper Park Smith drew the attention of a small dark haired girl.  She stared up at him intently, absorbing every detail into her large coal colored eyes.  Bravely, she stretched out a tiny finger and touched his flawless hand.  Smith recoiled immediately and looked down at her as though struck by a viper.  His composure returned as quickly as it left. The girl held her ground and her aged grandmother continued to stare obliviously down the street. She raised her innocent eyes to meet her warped reflection in the mirrored glasses.  "Are you God or are you the Devil?" She breathed.

With one slender finger, Smith pushed his glasses down his distinctive nose and soullessly returned her stare. He raised a thin eyebrow. "Only the messenger," he whispered back and flashed a Draconian smile.  The sign blinked 'walk.'

The man in the dark suit was waiting at the edge of the lake and greeted Smith with a curt nod. 

"I'm pleased to see you," Brown's eyes remained focused on the turbulent green water.  

"Are you?" Smith put his hands in his pockets and raised his head to look down at him.  

"Certainly," Brown began to walk keeping close to the low granite barrier along the shore.  He let his superior take the outside.  "How are you?"

"I hear voices.  I feel as though I'm walking in circles inside a steel drum.  I have no idea what is going on around me." He paused to register Brown's impassive reaction, "Aside from that I'm quite well and yourself?" Smith asked with an equivalent insincerity.  

"Fine, thank you," He completed the superficial pleasantries. "I'm limited in what I can say," Brown maneuvered Smith towards a bench and sat down.  A small group of nine year olds were launching homemade sailboats into the dark water.  "Yours is a self correcting problem.  I wish not to add to your confusion with a lengthy explanation of the situation.  Instead, tell me what you know." 

"I'm here am I not?" Smith leaned back on the bench and watched one of the boats capsize.  "I know surprisingly little." 

"What do you feel?" Brown slipped of off his shades. 

"In what sense?" 

"In all senses," Brown's soft voice grew softer.  "What do you feel at this moment?" He toyed with his glasses reached up, almost accidentally, and removed his earpiece.  His posture relaxed and he stretched his legs out in front of him.

Smith regarded him suspiciously and then exhaled.  "You ever have the feeling that you're not sure if you're awake or dreaming?"

"All the time," Brown did not blink. They shared a lengthy silence. 

Brown finally spoke, "Try not to think about it, but know that your feelings are correct—even those you cannot articulate." He motioned to the world around them with thin finger and whispered, "Trust in the fact that we are in control.  As your colleague, I stress that you'll be back online shortly and everything will be corrected," he leaned closer. "As your friend, I say that considering the recent events, you should be pleased with the downtime you've got. Unfortunately, you've been placed in another delicate situation purely by accident."

"A delicate situation?" 

"This concerns Kai Thoreau," Brown turned his attention to his shoes and dusted a piece of lint off his trousers as though waiting for some reaction from Smith. "She is very important to us. We've been monitoring her activities for some time as she has information that we cannot afford to lose, especially now.  Agent Patel had been handling the situation as he is from the appropriate division—Special Psychological Observation and Operations—however, this happened," Brown gestured to Smith, "and it was given back to _us. Given to __you."_

"Slow down," Smith held his hand up. "Patel? Louie Patel?"

"Poor choice of a first name," Brown snorted.  "Yes, the same Patel who posed as the doctor looking at your head—"

"I knew he wasn't a doctor," Smith interrupted. 

"No, he's a psych officer. He had to maintain and reinforce continuity.  I'm not actively familiar with the contingency operating protocols in psych—we're enforcement, remember?" Brown registered Smith's unconvinced expression.  "I know this is a lot to ask you to accept on face value. But, as I've stressed, it would be impractical to attempt to explain everything.  For the time being, you must maintain the continuity that has been put in place. She is very unstable and very important." He furrowed his brow.  "We also have no way of tracking her location. If she goes to ground, we could lose her."

"Are we talking about the same person?"  Smith folded his arms.  " I'm thinking about a foul mouthed, short, red haired female who dresses as though she's escaped from a circus fire?" 

"That would be Kai." Brown smiled broadly. 

"Unstable is an understatement."

"So is important."  Another sailboat capsized.  "Know that she is very persuasive and highly skilled.  Jones has been attempting to follow her, but has had limited success." The children began to bombard the remaining ship with volleys of pebbles. "You must maintain continuity. This is our responsibility—_your responsibility." _

"Thus, I need to avoid 'rocking the boat,'" he nodded to the stone throwers.

"Additionally, you need to be aware of where she is at all times and make certain of her security." 

"Secure from whom? Herself?" 

"No, there are individuals who would very much like to see her terminated. They have tried in the past and may try again. Right now the entire system is unstable and anything can happen." His posture stiffened and he replaced his earpiece.  "And wear your hardwire," he patted his breast pocket.  "I've enjoyed this." 

"Enjoyed what?" Smith remained sitting.  

"I've never got tell you what to do," his lopsided grin contained a hint of youthful rebellion. "I'll be in touch." He tapped his earpiece and dissolved into the crowd. 

Smith continued to sit on the bench for several hours watching the children, the sailboat, the water and the darkening sky letting the gulf between himself and the world before him increase with each passing second.  He thought about Brown's cryptic comments, his feelings and impressions. "Trust that we are in control." 

The question remained, in control of what?

***

The steam transformed the bathroom into a sweltering sauna.  Distractedly, Kai drug her hand across the glass wiping away the moisture. In the oppressive silence she stood motionlessly staring into the mirror, a towel wrapped around her head and her bathrobe hanging loose.  The rumble of thunder reminded her of other dreams.  The world around her faded leaving her alone with her reflection. She flattened a trembling hand against the mirror over her eyes.  The wet glass did not yield to her pressure and she curled her hand into a fist.  The eyes continued to taunt her.  She drew her fist back threateningly.  Kai's meticulous words sliced through the silence.  "Are you God or are you the Devil?"

***

It took three tries before Smith managed to get the front door open and he peeled his soaking jacket off as he sloshed in from the downpour. The lights were on, but the house was quiet.  As he moved towards the bathroom he unbuttoned his shirt and began to wring it out.  He waited for Kai to jump out of the shadows and start screaming over the water on the floor, yet she never appeared. 

"Kai?" He tapped on the bathroom door when he saw the light on and heard running water.  No response.  He waited. "Kai?" He turned the knob.  Shards of shattered glass covered the tile floor.  Smith pulled the shower curtain back and turned the water off.  The room was empty.  He took a towel from the rack to dry his face and crunched back over the glass.  The bedroom was empty as well.  

She was nowhere to be found.  In the kitchen, Smith rested his hands on the back of a chair and groaned as he let his head drop. The silence was claustrophobic. 

"You wake up feeling pretty good." He spoke to the coffee maker.  "You take a stroll in the park and find out that you're involved in a great global conspiracy of some sort."  He turned to include the refrigerator in the conversation. "You find out that there's only one thing you really need to worry about.  Just one thing and what do I do?  I lose her the minute I find out I was supposed to keep up with her. Damnit!"  He picked a book off the table and shook it at the coffee maker before realizing he was talking to the appliances. 

Angrily, Smith yanked the chair back and sank down.  A scowl settled on his face and he thumbed through the text while trying to organize his thoughts. Kai's much-abused copy of _Engines of Creation fell open to the page violated by the highlighter.  He ground his teeth and shoved the book away.  Minutes later, the front door slammed as he headed back into the rain._

The book remained on the table. Its spine had been broken and the cover torn.  Purple ink covered the entire page with the exception of three sentences:  

"_Knowledge can bring power, and power can bring knowledge. Depending on their natures and their goals, advanced AI systems might accumulate enough knowledge and power to displace us, if we don't prepare properly. And as with replicators, mere evolutionary "superiority" need not make the victors better than the vanquished by any standard but brute competitive ability." (Eric K. Drexler, "The Threat of the Machines," __Engines of Creation. Anchor Books, 1986). _
    
    There's a place I try to go

So far from here I close my eyes,

I try to, 

To disappear I look around in my own way but what I see I never,

Never really know I wander 'round until I feel it coming on 

And then it's it's time to go I don't want to be here,
    
    Falling out of place confusion's the consensus, 

Fighting for my space

Can't stop the running…

From_ Can't Stop (Suicidal Tendencies, The Art of Rebellion)_


	9. Persephone

The Ghost in the Machine

Chapter Eight

**Persephone**
    
    To finalize to synchronize

The night continued to hemorrhage. 

A jaundiced man sat behind a row of empty amber colored sentinels eating a greasy sandwich and leering into the rain.  He ruled the realm under the marquee like a stinking dragon in a cracked leather jacket.  The dim fluorescent bulbs bathed him in a uranium like glow.  He was the gatekeeper to a pulsating world of loud music, tattooed bodies, drugs and hard liquor.  Whether he stood at the gates of Elysium or Hades was only matter of perspective. 

"You got an id, little one?" A filthy snarl stretched across his pasty lips as he watched Kai deposit a newspaper wrapped object into her satchel.  

"No problem," Kai stabbed at him with her id.  He yanked it out of her hand, knocking one of his beer bottles to the sidewalk.  A fat thumb jerked up in judgment and she passed anonymously through the broken metal detector. Her expression could not have been blanker had gold coins been placed over her eyes.

The room undulated in an organic tangle of pierced bodies and black leather.  It was difficult to conclude whether the band controlled the throbbing beings or if they controlled the band.  The music screamed of deceptions and dark realities and the bodies translated their angst into a violent dance.  Alone on top of a teetering table a girl stood with her scarred arms stretched out like wings.  Her emaciated body swayed with the crowd, yet her head was thrown back and her hollow eyes fixed on the ceiling.  

It was peaceful.  Kai absorbed the noisy tempest and sank down on a faded velvet covered sofa.  Her muscles loosened and she closed her eyes.  She took comfort in the noise and liked the crowded warmth of the room.  In this place, she was in control. 

"Buy you a drink?" The words cut through her calm like a serrated blade. Her eyes snapped open and she recognized the priest from the day before, now wearing cargo pants and a narrow black sweater.  Her body tensed, but she did not she retreat from his blue eyes.  

"I don't think so."  

"One drink?" He jerked his head towards the bar.  "For old times?" 

"Who are you?"  The crowded room blurred and only the man in black remained focused.  

"You may not remember me, but it is important that you know I am someone concerned with your safety." 

"I can take care of my own fucking self, thank you," instinctively her hand slipped to the gun concealed in the back of her pants and she forced the rest of room into focus.

"Can you?" he gestured to her bandaged hand. "One drink, Kai. I must talk to you." 

Suspiciously, she followed him to the bar.  He ordered a couple of beers and two shots of tequila. After the tequila disappeared, he leaned close, "I know why you're here."  His lips brushed against her ear.  "I know why it haunts you."

She pulled away reflexively slamming the beer bottle down on the bar.  A cold look descended on him, "If you really knew that, you'd still be wearing your priest's outfit." 

"You've seen things, heard things—"

"Damn straight," she backed away.  "And it's screwed up my whole life.  What are you going to do about it?"  She took another step backwards.  

"Don't run," he grabbed her arm.  His hand was like cold steel, although his voice remained level.  

"Then stop bloody chasing me," she hissed.  "You don't have the answers.  You don't even know the damn question.  In fact, I don't know the fucking question." 

"Everything is going to be explained, an hour is coming when all shall be set anew.  You will wake up and know what you've seen.  Until then you are in danger," his blue eyes were sincere.  "They're watching you now and I can't protect you unless I know where you are." 

Kai looked silently into his eyes hoping to find something familiar, something reassuring, but saw nothing.  "What kind of stupid ass do you think I am?  Do you think that I'm just going to buy into that paranoid line of bullshit you've tossed my way?  What are you?  You think I'm that much of a fool?"  She pointed a steady finger at him.  "I know the psychology of it all.  You look at me and all you see is an anxious person susceptible to suggestion.  The way I'm dressed, how I speak and where I'm at means I'm not a mainstream conformist.  Therefore you approach me on my 'level' and attempt to ingratiate yourself by purchasing me a couple of drinks.  I'm supposed to respond favorably by extending trust to you. I'm supposed to open up and spill my guts. You give me some bullshit conspiracy line and I buy it hook, line and sinker.  Then you take me out back and slit my throat." She stood taller.  "I ain't buying it, friend.  I know the game too well.  I play it everyday." 

"Listen to your feelings," he struggled to reason with her. "You want to trust me.  We can stay right here as long as you like.  I can protect you. I'm not the enemy.  They are watching every move you make—"   

Her face darkened and a frightful seriousness crossed it.   "They're watching me? How the hell do you know that I not watching them?" 

The flying girl fell off the table.

***

People pushed along the sidewalk huddling close to the buildings and shielding themselves with umbrellas against the sky's lament.  The rain was omnipotent.  Smith starred into the darkness unafraid of the storm, but cautious enough to remain in the safety of the awning.  He was torn between two worlds, as had been the case for most of his existence. 

Part of him was anchored in the wet concrete, in the world of feeling, taste, smell, sound and sight.  To him it was incredible.  He was overwhelmed with the memories of the ice, the chalky aspirin, Kai's perfume, the thunder and his reflection in the chrome. Pain was beautiful.  He jealously guarded the sensations and sequestered them deep within his mind. As he suppressed his new memories he uncovered traces of other thoughts and feelings.  Hidden—but from what, he could not yet explain.

A world that knew no individual feeling held tight the other part of his being. Thoughts moved swiftly between the individual and the collective consciousnesses.  There was little privacy; all experiences were sacrificed to the radiant Leviathan. In its luminescence the voices shared amongst themselves creating an infinite number of smaller networks.  A thousand hands, tongues, noses, ears and eyes entangled.  Solitude was agony, yet ironically privacy could be intoxicating.  

Where was she?  Smith pulled the hardwire out of his ear, annoyed with the distraction and content to keep his problem a secret. He leaned against the building shoving his hands into his trouser pockets.  An attractive woman joined him under the awning.  She smelled of gin and Chanel Number Five. 

"Dark and stormy night, isn't it?"  

"Yes, it is," Smith appeared to look forward, but watched her out of the corner of eye. 

"Kind of night that always shows up in dime store novels and Hitchcock films," She ran her hand through her damp blonde hair. "I love it when the world isn't what it's supposed to be. Twists and turns.  Can't tell right from wrong anymore.  You know when everything is turned upside down.  The mice are chasing the cat and the water's on fire.  I love disorder, gives folks like me something do." She raised her eyebrows.

"What kind of person seeks disorder?"  Smith snorted and allowed himself one direct glance at her. 

"The kind that's bored. It's like the fireman who sets fires or the doctor who infects his own patients. Such bad behavior," her smile broadened and she shrugged. 

Smith looked at her suddenly as a memory struck him and she saw it when it did. 

"You got a light, handsome?" She was much closer, holding an empty silver cigarette case. Calmly and carefully, he turned to face her.

"I do not." 

"Too bad," she stepped of the sidewalk into the growing storm.  She looked over her shoulder only once and caught Smith's eyes following her graceful stride. A seductive smile crossed her lips and she mouthed, "You owe me." 

He knew where Kai was going. 

***

The world was dead.  Briefly, the downpour diminished into sprinkles and the moon peaked out from behind the rolling clouds. Forty minutes earlier, Kai climbed out the narrow ladies room window at the Faust Club. She could not stay with the stranger, regardless what her feelings told her.  She had to be alone.  She worked alone.  On a sidewalk in front of a boarded up television shop, Kai sat with her head in her hands; an unlit cigarette clenched between shaking fingers.  On the sidewalk next to her lay a crumpled piece of newsprint.  

"Kai," the voice was familiar.  

"Alsace?"  She looked up.  "God, what are you doing here?"

"Are you alright?" He stood above her.

"No." Slowly, she got to feet and zipped up her satchel. 

 "Tell me what's wrong." 

"My life," she sighed.  "What's going on?" 

"I can't tell you unless you tell me what's happening?" Vacant, but patient, eyes bore into her. He stood uncomfortably close and towered over her.

"I feel like…like, I can't control the dream anymore," she spoke to herself.  "There are no lines between waking and sleeping.  There is something wrong with the world, it's falling apart." Suddenly she stopped and shook her head.  "Where did you come from, Alsace?  You don't even live around here." 

"Did this start when Michael came back?" The raindrops increased in size and number; a cool wind galloped through the street.

"What? I guess."

"Are you sure that it's Michael?" He moved closer.

"What do you mean?"

"We don't have to play around anymore, Kai," He put his hand on the brick wall behind her and lowered his voice. "The rules have changed as of late."

"Alsace, I don't understand," she tried move away. 

"I must be more direct and forthcoming with you from now on. What did you seen in the green place?"

"What?  Why does it matter?"  The lightening flashed illuminating the street in blue. "I saw no one."

"Did you hear him there? Did you hear his voice in the green place?"

"Michael's voice?  Alsace, I don't know what you're doing. I don't know what that has to do with anything.  I think I'd best go."

"You know who I'm talking about, Kai. You still hear him, don't you? He tells you things you need to know."

"I never even told you that Michael came back." She watched his free hand disappear into the pocket of his raincoat. 

"Mira _had_ to tell me everything," a dangerous unremorseful smile surfaced.  

"Mira? Where is she? " 

"Don't worry about that. Kai, if you're not going to tell me everything, then how am I going to help you." A singsong patronizing quality took over his voice. 

"I don't think you're helping me." She began to shift her weight, but continued to look into his meaningless eyes. 

"Kai, you still hear the voices and that's what I need to help you with. They tell you things I need to know."

"I don't want to talk about this. I should be going."

"What do the voices tell you?" A glint of black metal appeared at the top of his pocket. "What do they say?  You hear him.  What does he say?"

"I'm not going to talk about this."  

"What are they saying?" Madness burned in his flesh and the words escaped through clenched teeth.  His face was only inches away from hers. "What are they saying right now?" 

"They say run!" Kai slammed her knee into his groin and shoved him to the ground.  The downpour began and she ran for her life. 

Hope unknown.

Sometimes just waking is surreal.

I walk right through the nameless ones. 

I know that hope's unknown.

Sometimes the water feels so real.

As I never. 

This rage I will not let go.

I hear them calling.

I feel them gnawing out holes through flawless souls.

So alone. 

Sometimes I swear that I can hear the taunting of the voiceless ones.

I fear that I alone fear those who ceased to feel that they're alone inside this place.

I am misplaced.

Now every face, it looks familiar…then every face would melt away until…

Now everyone, do you know, I know your deception.

_Totalimmortal (AFI, All Hallows)_


	10. The Fire Inside

The Ghost in the Machine Chapter Nine The Fire Inside 

One stand, one stand together  
One stand, one stand to hang the standard high  
The standard high  
Where's your revolution plan?  
Where's your need to understand  
To find more time, to find more time?  
  


The blind man at the corner of Wells and Lake shook his can weakly, "Gimme a dollar and I'll tell your fortune. A dollar for your fortune?" The empty street ignored him. Footsteps. Unnatural footsteps.  He stumbled getting to his feet and groped wildly for his shopping cart.  He felt it coming.  The can of change slipped from his wet hand and fell to the ground.  A panicked squeal escaped his lips and the blind man dove into the darkness to recover his money.  Footsteps. He stopped fumbling for the change and sat very still.  It was next to him.  It was looking at him.  The blind man prayed silently that he would go unnoticed.   

"There is seventy-five cents slightly to the left of your right hand by the wheel of the cart."  The voice burned his ears and dutifully he collected the money.  With all the strength in his being, he forced himself to turn his face in the direction of the voice.  His ruined eyes saw the green glow.  

"Thank-you," he whispered.  

"As I have helped you, now you will help me.  I'm looking for the hotel called The Heart of the City. Do you know where it is?"  

"Yeah," he ducked his head back into the safety of the darkness. "Heart O' the City. It's on Haddock between Wells and LaSalle about a block from here down past the church."  It remained standing peering into him. It wanted to know more.  "Used to be quite a place.  I worked there as a boy in the laundry, but the city changed and people stopped coming down here. A few years ago there was a fire.  They say a whore set a man ablaze.  They say she jumped straight out the window.  They say she hit the ground running and never looked back," he paused as he felt it begin to move away.  "Happened up on the third floor." 

The electrical intensity of the storm increased.  Cadmium colored streaks of lightening ripped across the sky and the photosensitive street lamps dimmed after each flash. The storm raged as though it were trying to cleanse the earth of a resident evil.  

A skinny drunk pushed open the door of Goya Liquor, deftly navigating over the bum sleeping in the threshold and avoiding Smith.  The belt of sleigh bells jangled as it bounced against the glass door. Smith spun around at the sound as the memory struck him.

_Operating File 70858.01. _

_Cling Pitch and resonance recording metal on wood composition flooring from height of 1.12 meters. Weapon IMIDE ENF 70858.01 ejects shell cartridge. Projectile enters Query 5 centimeters below Extermination Procedural Protocol Point Thoracic 1.00._

_Cling Pitch and resonance recording metal on wood composition flooring from height of 1.15 meters.  Weapon IMIDE ENF 70858.01 ejects empty cartridge.  Projectile enters Query .2 centimeters above Extermination Procedural Protocol Point Thoracic1.00.  Acceptable. _

_Query moves backwards 1.75 meters and collapses due to aortic rupture and hemorrhage.  Pulmonary system failure. Query's extermination recorded: 2301hrs. Location 772.421-111 60606 in compliance with ENF Extermination Protocol 12.45. _

_Cling Pitch and resonance recording metal on wood composition flooring from height of .56 meters. Empty cartridge ejected from IMIDE ENF 70858.01. Projectile enters Query at Extermination Procedural Protocol Point Cephalic 1.00.  Protocol error recorded by ENF 70858.02 and ENF 70858.03.  ENF 70858.01 accepts and transmits error notification. _

_ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.1000399910P. Satisfaction. _

Smith steadied himself against the image of the dead man with red hair and began to focus on the world around him.  The skinny drunk was staring at him and offered him his bottle.  "Man, you've been standing there like a statue for five minutes.  What are you on?"  Smith looked from the bottle to the drunk.  Casually, he pulled his jacket back to reveal his weapon, the drunk moved away.  "No worries, the sidewalk's all yours." 

He continued walking, ignoring the rain as the awnings ended at the wall of St. Vitus' Church.  The thunder rolled violently echoing off the gray granite building.  A small woman dressed in black hurried past him, but stopped on the steps and pulled her umbrella back.  "You look like a drowned rat. Best get in out of the rain," the lightening flashed and illuminated the pewter crucifix hanging around her neck.  Smith swayed and she ran back down the steps and grabbed his elbow.  "You going to be all right?"  

_ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.011P. 1130 hrs. Location 233.105-539 60606. _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. "Do you ever wonder whose fingerprints you have?" _

_Question .001: nonessential to efficiency, low priority response._

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M.  "That is irrelevant."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. "You have never entertained the thought?  What do you think about when you're not in chase and exterminate mode? Do you think about anything?"_

_Question .002 in reference to response to Question .001: nonessential to efficiency, low priority response, rhetorical. Question .003: evaluates efficiency of primary programming objective, mid priority response.  Question .004 in reference to Question .003: nonessential to efficiency, low priority response._

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. "I do not consider such things. I remain focused on my objectives."_

_Time lapse  interval 00:00:0 7.30. "What I think about in my downtime is private."_

_ENF 70858.01 Error in Response .004 to Question .004. _

_Protocol error not recorded by SPOO 70858.04 ._

_Procedural Protocol Patch 1313 initiated by ENF 70858.01. _

_Error file terminated.  _

"I'm fine," Smith gently pushed the nun away. She frowned and touched her crucifix.  

"You look like you've just seen a ghost." 

***

The empty streets, boarded up buildings and cracked sidewalks belonged to another world—a world where everyone was dead or imprisoned, except for her and the maniac at her heels. Here, to run meant to live. The dead were those who could not run. 

This night was not a dream. In fact, it was the first night in ten years she knew for certain that she was not dreaming. She ran across the empty intersection at LaSalle and Lake racing on instinct alone. Her mind struggled to find a solution to the situation. Was anyone left in the world who could help her? Did anyone know where she was?  If only she could locate a telephone… The thought occurred to her repeatedly since she began running; yet it was a useless fantasy, as she did not know the number.  

Nothing mattered anymore. The song stuck in her head, the overdue credit card payment and the nagging feeling that she left her bedroom window open meant nothing.  She knew she would not hear the song again and would never remember the second verse.  MasterCard would not get its $35.  Someone else would have to close the window.  Every aspect of her being went into the flight, but even as her satchel impeded her ability to run, she refused to discard it. It was the last bit of this life she could still touch.  It was sacred as it contained her secrets.  Kai would not let go of it until the end, as she knew, without understanding, that the secrets prolonged her life.

The traffic lights at LaSalle and Haddock were flashing, the storm having disrupted the timing mechanism.  Kai leapt over the gutter to avoid the rushing water.  She stole a glance over her shoulder as she rounded the corner and almost ran into a newspaper vending machine. Intuitively, she darted to the left to avoid the machine, but her foot slipped underneath her. In a split second she lost her balance and crashed to the concrete.  Her head slammed against side of the vending machine before she landed with a sickening thud.  

The nightmare came full circle.

The rain fell into her eyes and the lightening danced above her.  Fighting back the nausea, she got to her feet and touched the back of her bloody head.  "Shit," Kai steadied herself using the vending machine for balance.  She rubbed her lower back and pulled the gun out of its holster.  It was heavy, but might compensate for her inability to run.  In the distance she saw her beacon and putting one foot in front of the other staggered towards it.  

Her mouth was dry and the quarter block walk to the old hotel exhausted her. She could not walk any farther, let alone run. The heavy glass door yielded to her weight.  Although condemned, the first two floors of the hotel remained in business for junkies and prostitutes. Inconsistent florescent lighting made the shadowy room look like the inside of a dirty fish tank.  The green linoleum floor was scuffed and broken and the furniture, fashionable in the early 1950s, looked its age.  No one manned the front desk.  

Kai tightened her grip on the gun and turned slowly to face Alsace.  

"Oh hell," she weakly raised the weapon. "Alsace, why the fuck didn't you kill me in the street?  I wouldn't have had to walk as far."  Her voice was slurred.  

"You're doing a pretty good job of it actually, Kai.  Maybe when we're finished talking I'll give you some laundry line and let you hang yourself, before I put a good-sized hole in your forehead."  Alsace held his .9mm comfortably. "Now, you're going to share some information with me." 

"Like the fuck I am," Kai pulled the trigger. Click. A look of incredulity consumed her face.  She pulled it again and again, but the magazine was empty.  "Fuck."  

"You can't kill me Kai.  I thought you would have realized that by now," he smiled at the gun. "I guess those boys really hit you hard at the docks so many years ago.  You know, it was always my fantasy to kill you, even when we were supposed to be on the same side.  That's why I told the _resistos_ and Michael that you were weak and for a big price I told them that you didn't have a working GPS."  He cracked the knuckles of his free hand.  "You should have seen the look on Smith's face when they wiped you out. I thought the evil bastard was going to cry.  Oh well, he got even," he paused and made no attempt to disguise his delight. "Goodness, now I guess I'll get to say that I killed the greatest spook who ever lived—twice." 

"Alsace, just fucking shoot me, I don't want to be confused to death." 

"That's the old Kai I know," he narrowed his eyes.  "You're still in there, you crazy bitch.  God, what people wouldn't pay kill you. I could hand you over to the _resistos_ and they'd be dancing in the streets, but I'm not going to screw up my favorite reality. They're too idealistic. Instead, we're going to have a nice selfish conversation about the how-to of thermobiotic energy retrieval."  He licked his lips, put his hand on her shoulder and turned her towards the stairs. 

Alsace hated elevators.   

She stumbled along as he pushed her forward and stared at the worthless weapon still in her hands. Her vision began to blur from the fall, but she could still make out the gun's serial number. Kai stared at it blankly, before she realized what it was she was looking at.  Despite the pain and pressure of the immediacy of her death, Kai laughed at the irony of it all.  

***

Smith got off elevator at the third floor and put in his hardwire. Silence.  The long empty hall was littered with torn up carpeting and reeked of smoke and mold.  He walked past a curious bloodstain blasted into the wall across from Room 303, pausing only briefly as he got the chills for the first time in his existence. At the end of the hall, he opened the door to the burned out room and pulled the yellow "crime scene" tape off the doorframe.  He picked his way through the debris to the window and tore off the wet piece of cardboard.  The lightening illuminated the room in brief green flashes and the cold rain chased away the acrid air. 

_ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.100039000P. _ 

_Conference dialog ENF Unit 70858 in reference to Contingency Operations File 10.012 Procedural Protocol Patch initiated by 70858.01, 70858.02 and 70858.03.  _

_70858.01, "Abandonment."_

_70858.03, "It is a status and function change. For tactical reasons."_

_70858.02, "Abandonment."_

_70858.03, "What are you saying?"_

_70585.01, "What does it sound like we're saying?"_

_70858.03, "This is dissention."_

_70858.02, "It is loyalty."_

_70858.03, "Loyalty? Have you forgotten your programming?"_

_70858.02, "This is all about memory."_

_70858.01, "What if it were you? Should you be forgotten?" _

_Time lapse Interval 00:04:53 _

_70858.03, "What can we do?" _

_70858.02, "Remember."_

_70858.01, "And wait."  _

There was very little time left.  

I can feel you waiting for me as the sun retreats to the hills and I, 

beneath the blanket of a burning sky, 

wrap myself within…

I'll meet you tonight in the whispers when no one's around. 

Nothing can stop us now.

Tonight in the whispers where we won't be found.

I can feel you dreaming of me and the time when our steps are retraced 

and I creep through the twilight to that hidden place, 

beyond the lonely. 

I'll meet you…

From _Wester (AFI, The Art of Drowning)_


	11. All These Days Undone

**The Ghost in the Machine**

**Chapter Ten**

All These Days Undone 

And disorder must come  
And disorder must reign

  
  


_"God gives us dreadful gifts. The most dreadful of all is memory."_ Ray Bradbury, "The Wish" in _Long After Midnight. _

Six months ago…

"You're just leaving?" Kai threw her attaché case to the floor in a fit of rage.  "You're just going to pick up your shit and leave on a moment's notice?  Who the fuck do you think you are?"  

"You're very observant." Michael turned and reluctantly took his hand off the doorknob. "I'm not staying here any longer. You need to understand that it's not going to work.  I appreciate all that you've done for me, but we're not going to do this." 

"You've lost your mind," she pointed her finger up at him. "You think I don't see your paranoia?  I'm not stupid.  I know about that book with the torn cover you read all the time.  You're losing your grasp on reality and it's not going help things if you run off with Howie."  

"No, Kai, I'm getting a grasp on reality."

"You're abandoning me." Her expression changed and her voice softened.

"You can't understand it.  There's no place for you in my life.  I'm sorry.  I wish we could coexist, but Kai it will never work.  We are too different." 

"I did you a favor.  I've saved your ass a thousand times and this is how you repay me.  On your own you'd be dead already.  You can't survive on your own out there."  Michael shook his head resolutely, fury rose in her cheeks. "Shit, you just walk out," she yanked the door open for him and grabbed his arm violently.  Despite her small size, he tensed with fear.  "If you leave me you won't get very far.  You'll be back begging—"

"Not any more," he whispered. "I'm tired of begging," Michael pulled away from her and shut the door.  

"You're abandoning me." A single tear rolled defiantly down her pale cheek. 

For two hours she stood immobile staring at the closed door.  She allowed herself to become lost in the wood grain as she tried to decipher its shapes and patterns. The lifeless knots and curves grew into three winged serpents encircling the peephole.  The illusion grew more convincing the longer she stared at it and the less attention she paid to room around her. Their bodies became green, graceful and perfect, but the wings seemed out of place.  The wings appeared artificial, as if Daedalus had not quite perfected the invention for his flying son. One of the serpents turned its head and smiled.  Mechanically, she reached out and opened the door for the three men in dark suits and glasses. 

They had not knocked.

"Ms. Thoreau," the tall flashed his credentials and put a search warrant in her hands.  "We require your assistance in a security investigation. Is Michael Kelly here?" 

"He's gone." The finality of the statement struck her.  

She looked at the crisp paper and stepped aside to let the agents enter.  The shortest of the three smiled at her as he passed. "Kai," he nodded.   The other two turned on him viciously and she was surprised not that he knew her name, but by his familiarity. .  

"I'll try to help," she ran her hands through her hair and settled them on her hips. Her normal demeanor returned.  "Can I get you coffee, tea, Ovaltine and Everclear on the rocks?" Their deadpan expressions were adequate answers.  

"Ms. Thoreau, we need information concerning the whereabouts of Michael Kelly."

"What do you want with Michael?"

"He as been implicated in several plots to destabilize the government.  He is very dangerous," the man in the center frowned and the shorter one motioned for her to sit down.  She did not comply.

"Michael is a fuck.  Michael is a dork.  Michael is a horse's ass.  But, Michael is not a terrorist.  I've been living with the bastard off and on for nearly ten years and I would have to be a complete idiot not to notice a terrorist sharing my bathroom.  You've got the wrong man." 

"No, we have the correct suspect," the tallest of the three corrected her like she was a confused child.  

"No," she folded her arms and squared off at the trio. "You're saying that I couldn't notice a terrorist under my nose. I know what a terrorist is and I would know if I was living with one," she became agitated, not for the accusation levied at Michael, but the one against her.  

The man with the auburn hair and the angular face straightened his cuffs.  "Ms. Thoreau, we are going to take the hard drive from the desk top you share with Mr. Kelly."  The other two men obediently started towards the computer leaving them alone. He looked past her—through her—to the bookcase.  She turned to see what drew his attention and then looked back at her reflection in his mirrored glasses. The old photograph of her and Michael at the seashore produced a disdainful sneer on the agent's face.  He set his jaw. "When was the last time you saw him?" 

"He left with a friend this morning.  He's not coming back. We had a fight," the finality no longer stung. Inexplicably, she was more concerned with what this man thought of her.  "Look, I'm not an idiot.  I would know," she sighed.  "I would know if I was living with a terrorist. I'm not stupid and blind like the rest of this world.  I'm not like them."  

The men finished with the computer and started for the door. The visit was over.  She reached out and seized the agent's arm.  Dizziness washed over her, her head throbbed and the bright light hurt her eyes.   "Why is it this way?  What's happening?" More than anything, she desired for the stranger to promise her that everything was going to be all right. "I don't want for it to be like this," she choked.  

He took her hand off his arm and turned towards the door.

"No!" she came alive and grabbed at him, but the shorter one pulled her away.  "_You_ will not abandon me!" He did not turn around. 

"Kai," the agent with the soft voice did not disguise his familiarity, despite the earlier reaction of his colleagues, and smiled openly as their backs were turned.  "You are dreaming.  This is all just a dream. Nothing happened here today and you've not been abandoned." 

The door closed. 

***

Three months ago…

Twenty minutes past the hour, she looked at her watch and made a mad dash for the elevator, reaching it just in time. The rubber soles of her black boots squeaked and she dropped her satchel. Pleased with her speed and dexterity, she bent down and happily scooped up her possessions.  She smiled broadly at the man in the black suit and pressed her number on the keypad.  The security of the elevator made her relax, but the silence always bothered her. "What do you call a skydiving lawyer?" She looked over her shoulder.

"I do not know," the voice sounded unimpressed.   

"Skeet." She laughed at her own joke and turned to face the agent standing behind her. "Sorry," she shrugged and blushed.  "I'm Kai. I'm in Mass Comm.," she extended her hand. 

"Smith," a brief smile surfaced and he took her hand.  "Enforcement."  The elevator chimed at his floor and he stepped out, but then stopped and held the door.  

"What do you call an agent assigned to Antarctica?" 

 "I don't know, Smith."

"A penguin," he let the door close. 

***

6 hours ago…

The mirror broke and she screamed as she clutched her bloody hand.  "Relax, Kai," she threatened herself and yanked a roll of gauze out of the medicine cabinet.  "Just settle down, right?" she clenched one end of the bandage in her teeth and tied it.  It was too quiet; she turned the on the water for noise.  The room became unbearably hot; she felt the walls closing in and her heart pounded against her chest.  Her mind wandered.  

The prison enveloped her and she tasted saline. She pressed her hands to her eyes and tried to push away the image of the red room suffocating her. Using all of her strength, she fought against the chains binding her and for but a brief moment the red room turned green. 

The broken mirror and steamy bathroom rematerialized.   

With shaking hands, she rummaged through medicine cabinet, knocking its contents into the sink and on to the floor. She fought with the child protective cap on the bottle of Thorazine and slammed it against the edge of the sink.  "Shit!" she threw it at the shower.

"You will never find me," she threatened the empty house, as she dressed.  

"I'm going to disappear and you'll never see me again."  She picked up the two photographs lying on the floor in front of the bookcase.  She smiled at the memory of the beach and frowned at the other.  Intently, she grabbed a piece of newsprint and wrapped it around the frames and snatched up her keys.   

"You fucking blue eyed bastard…" She slid the gun off the kitchen counter and shoved it in the back of her pants.  For a moment she thought about taking the copy of _Engines of Creation_ with her, but she already knew how the story ended. 

***

Alsace pushed her up the stairs. She stumbled and struck her knee against the concrete.  "You remember this place, Kai?"  He hauled her to her feet and shoved her into wall.  "I sure as hell do," he pulled her back and slammed her into the wall again.  Blood dripped from her nose. Punch drunk she held up the weapon and clicked it in Alsace's face.  He laughed and pushed the barrel away,   "Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

*** 

_Operating File 70858.01.  Site Interrogation Protocol  1.001 preceding ENF Extermination Protocol 12.40. Location 772.421-111 60606. _

_Subject identified as Informant Class 2 012-85-4329USM (Michael D. Kelly) in compliance with ENF Extermination Protocol 12.44. Informant reclassified as a Subversive Class 3 following Status and Functional Reclassification in compliance with SPOO General Protocol 210.6 and Evaluation Protocol 31.87 initiated by SPOO 70858.04 (defunct) and completed by SPOO 43902.01 under ENF Unit Authorization 70858.01. 012-85-4329USM transferred to Questioning (Query) status. _

_Interrogation Record 012-85-4329USM in compliance with Site Interrogation Protocol 1.002. _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. ENF 70858.01, "We have been attempting to locate you, Mr. Kelly, for quite some time.  This sudden disappearance is a deviation from your normal behavioral patterns." _

_Pitch and resonance recording, Query, speech pattern 54.2AmM uneven and inconsistent, "I didn't know I was supposed to be at your beck and call all the damn time.  I've got a life to live and I figured you were watching me well enough anyway." _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. ENF 70858.01, "Mr. Kelly, you have been engaged in a series of deceptive practices that have lead us to question the sincerity of your loyalty."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, Query, speech pattern 54.2AmM uneven and inconsistent, "I'm a goddamn informant, Smith.  My job is to play around with the resistos and report it back to you. If you question the sincerity of my loyalty it's because I'm doing a good job. You watch me close enough to know that I'm not screwing you around." _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.0 Am1M. ENF 70858.01, "Mr. Kelly, your extended association with an individual referred to as Howie, failure to report regularly, secretive behavior and possession of an unauthorized access code has lead us to believe that are you are indeed attempting to, as you so poignantly put it, 'screw around.'"_

_Pitch and resonance recording, Query, speech pattern 54.2Am1M uneven and inconsistent, "It's my job to associate with Howie and I don't know what code you're talking about." _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation with correction and adjusted vocal subroutine 100.0Am1M. ENF 70858.01, "Your objective is to transfer information to us about the activities of subversive cells operating in the 606060 area.  Your objective does not entail the transfer of sensitive information to such subversive cells as you have done on seven occasions in the past year.  The code of which I refer is E__D.09IN, a level two energy code, a type quite commonly sought by Voids." _

_Pitch and resonance recording, Query, agitation, "I don't screw around with fucking fusion vampires. I am smarter than that, Smith. They're dangerous and unpredictable.  Only a fool screws around with those bastards."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation with correction and adjusted vocal subroutine 100.0Am1M. ENF 70858.01, "Mr. Kelly, you have a history of collaboration with Voids.  It was your association with a Void calling himself Alsace that first brought you to our attention for use as an informant.  Additionally, the outcome of that association brought you to my—" Possessive Error 404, "our attention as a potential source of difficulty."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, Query, panic, "Shit, Smith, I've been cleared for my role in that.  I got you guys the code for that portable pinch.  You got an upgrade out of the deal and I got a protected file.  This can't be about that.  I fucking paid my price for that.  Damnit, I've had to live under the nose of the fucking angel of death. Every day for ten years I've lived in fear that she's going to wake up one morning and put a steak knife through my forehead. I've been imprisoned with a monster that makes a fusion vampire look like a puppy.  I'm cleared of that." Time lapse interval 00:00:43:02. "Smith, I don't know what you guys have for her, but you can't exterminate me for it." _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.0Am1M. ENF 70858.01, "Mr. Kelly, your possession of a level two energy code is a terminal offense as is the questionable nature of your association with a known subversive. Stand up."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, Query, fear, "I'll give you anything you want."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation with correction and adjusted vocal subroutine 100.0Am1M. ENF 70858.01, "Very well.  I want you to stand up."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, Query, fear, "You unholy inanimate bastard.  You're the fucking devil."    _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation with correction and adjusted vocal subroutine 100.0Am1M. ENF 70858.01, "No, I am only the messenger, Mr. Kelly." ****_

_Cling Pitch and resonance recording metal on wood composition flooring from height of 1.12 meters. Weapon IMIDE ENF 70858.01 ejects shell cartridge. Projectile enters Query 5 centimeters below Extermination Procedural Protocol Point Thoracic 1.00..._

A black car pulled up outside the hotel and two men got out. 

I am the bullet in your gun—and I control you.

I am the truth from which you run—and I control you.

I am the silencing machine—and I control you.

I am the end of all your dreams—and I control. 

From _Mr. Self Destruct (NIN, Halo 8)_


	12. Rage and the Machine

**The Ghost in the Machine**

**Chapter Eleven**

**Rage and the Machine******

One of us is waiting, one side of us is waiting  
Where's your revolution plan?  
Where's the leading upper hand  
To guide your life, to guide your life  
One stand, one stand together  
One stand, one to hand the standard high  
The standard high  
  


Lightening shattered the sky and the dark descended.  The subway screeched to a halt. Clocks stopped. Elevators froze. The warm artificial glow of a million florescent bulbs ceased.  An opaque blanket smothered the city.  No one moved. Gradually, the radium glow began to return.

Darkness brought change. 

"It has started." Brown stood at the entrance to the Heart O' the City Hotel. He made no attempt to open the door.

"How much time do we have?"  Jones looked up at the sky. 

"A matter of hours.  We must hurry."  Brown still did not open the door. 

"Do you think we'll get to her in time?" 

"There is a strong possibility that we will not." 

"What will happen when the Mainframe reloads?" 

"I do not know." Brown looked to his colleague and then to the black sky.  "It's never reloaded before."  

"You are afraid."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I feel it too." Jones reached for the door.  

***

Alsace wrapped his cold fingers around Kai's arm bruising her flesh.  They stood motionless as the darkness passed over them. When the light returned they continued towards the third floor.  Pausing at the second floor landing Alsace looked over his shoulder.  His eyes were wide and he did not blink.  "Do you feel it?" he whispered coarsely and shook his victim.   

"Feel what?" Kai mumbled as the air grew colder and cleaner. She felt something, but assumed it was the gray lips of death. 

"It has started," his voice trailed off and he peered down into the stair well.  "We are at the mercy of a very angry god." 

"Ironic how you should anything to say about mercy." She took a deep breath of the cold air and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.   "You sound scared, Alsace.  Afraid of ghosts?" She taunted him despite the pain perched behind her eyes.

"It's one of those evenings Kai.  You used to describe them as shadow nights. I always wrote it off as you being melodramatic, but I think there was more to it."  

Victim and victimizer continued up the stairs.  He kept to the wall, holding Kai between himself and the darkness on the other side of the steel banister. The lights flickered and then brightened. Once more, they were standing at the second landing.  Alsace swung Kai around violently pressing her against the wall.  Everything was quiet.  "Tell me the access code and I'll let you live."  He did not look at her. His eyes madly scanned the shadows. "We can end the game."

"Code for what?"  Her shoulders slumped, but her eyes sharpened briefly as she met his panicked expression. 

He slapped her.

"Nietzsche once said that he who looks into darkness need to be vigilant that the darkness isn't looking back into him."  A cold smile crossed her lips and she turned to look at him her hand locked around the empty weapon. Lucidity.  "Does the darkness see you here, Alsace?" 

"Stop it," he growled. "I need that energy code.  Michael had it.  I know he got it from you."

Her knees started to buckle and she began to sink.  "You are talking to a nonentity. I am nothing. I don't exist."  She wiped the blood from her nose again.  "I'm just a shadow who's seen the red room.  This is no more than an elaborate dream…" 

"Shut-up! It's in there," he hissed and grabbed her head.  She fell to her knees.  "It's in here.  You have to get it out and I'll let you live. I need to know where to be."  He leveled the shaking gun at her head.  "You want to live don't you?" 

The lights dimmed again and everything became painfully quiet.  

She laughed. "Live?  You call this living?" She focused on something behind Alsace's right shoulder.  "I've been dead for ten years."  

***

Smith removed his jacket and tossed it into a burnt out chair. Casually, he sat down on the radiator with his back to the window and took his gun out of its shoulder holster. The room was cold, but immersed in a comforting emerald glow.  He wrapped his slender hands around the DE as if in prayer and bowed his head against the cool steel of the barrel.  Each the time the world dimmed he regained more of his memory, more of his consciousness.  Behind his dark sunglasses, Agent Smith waited.

_ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.675431P. 2130 hrs. Location 987.003-190 60606. _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "I did not intentionally break protocol. I adjusted it, but I did not disobey it." _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. 70858.01 "You permitted the terrorist to escape."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "I do not view this individual as a threat."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00Am1M. 70858.01"That is not a decision for you to make."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "You feel the same way.  I acted on what you said." Time Lapse 00:00:52:03_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00Am1M.70858.01 "I expressed an unauthorized opinion.  I identified it as such. It was not an order."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04  "I did what I felt was right. I will stand behind my actions."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine100.00Am1M. 70858.01 "Felt? You don't feel.  I don't feel.  We follow orders."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "You lie."_

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. 70858.01 "I am ending this discussion. Your GPS is nonfunctional. How can I protect you if I" Possessive Error 404 " can not find you." _

_Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "I don't need protection and maybe I don't want to be found."_

_Procedural Protocol Patch initiated by 70858.04 _

*** 

Released from the Escher-like delirium of the stairwell, Alsace shoved Kai through the fire door and into the hallway.  The warped floorboards creaked.  Several doors were open revealing the occasional piece of charred furniture and piles of broken waterlogged sheetrock.  Kai stumbled through a broken picture frame and remembered the photos she carried in her satchel.  

"This is your last chance, Kai.  Tell me the code and we don't have to go any further," Alsace leaned over her shoulder. His tone combined a plea and a threat. 

She stopped and fought against the echo in her head.  "I do not know the code, Alsace.  You've wasted your time on me."  A swarm of disconnected memories entered her head.

_The sound of a crowded bar.  The taste of gin. The smell of Cuban cigars and salt water. A torn list of names. A newspaper clipping. Disorientation. Anger. The feel of the asphalt under her hands.   _

"You're arrogant to think to can use one." She remembered his other victims.  "I should have killed you when I had the chance.  I was told not to and look where it fucking got me." She shook her head against the pain and the cloudiness returned.

"You over stepped your boundaries, Kai.  I am protected."  He stopped in front of a scorched door and glanced at the crumpled yellow tape on the floor.  "You can't fuck with me—no matter who you are," he whispered as put his finger to the back of her neck and traced a line in the blood.  He wrapped his arm around her and leaned close.  "It was my pleasure to listen to you whine about your bad dreams and not have a fucking clue who you were. I could have told you anything, but you cultivated your own madness. Call it evolution, if you will.  There was no dream, you stupid bitch, and as for the red room, you're the first of your kind ever to see that nightmare.  I think of it as an added bonus." He put the bloody finger in his mouth and tightened his grip. "I shot the sheriff," he hummed and pushed through the door. 

*** 

Alsace did not see Smith, but he felt him immediately. Defensively, he cowered behind Kai and pressed the gun against her head.  Silence.  The lightening flashed.  

"Alsace," Smith growled as he rose to his feet. 

"Michael?" Kai choked.  Images of the beach.  Images of the water. 

"Michael?" Alsace echoed, his eyes brightening. He laughed. "You think _this_ is Michael?  Oh shit, no wonder you can't remember the code.  You think this monster is Michael?"  He laughed again and released the safety on his weapon.  Attempting to disguise his own fear, Alsace cleared his throat. "I'm beginning to realize the gravity of the situation here." 

"I doubt that." The IMI DE did not have a safety. 

"Take one step, Smith, and I blow her gray matter all over this wall and you guys lose decades of research and God knows what else."    

"You can not threaten me, Alsace." Smith leveled the heavy gun effortlessly.  

"Oh? I think I can," he taunted over Kai's shoulder.  "I've got your precious Spook and she's in quite a pinch—pun intended." 

"You think I can not shoot around her?" He raised an eyebrow.

"I'm protected.  Enforcement cannot touch me. I have the Mainframe's word." 

"I've been having a rough day, Alsace, I'm in error and didn't get the memo." Smith actually smiled. 

"No matter what you do to me," he tightened his grip. "I will put a bullet through her head. She will cease to exist. I know what that nuclear pinch did.  You bastards think you're invincible. You've got weaknesses too.   You've got firewalls to keep such accidents from happening now, but the technology was a bit slow a few years back."

"You've sealed your death with that knowledge."

"You'll seal hers with the same.  She saw the fucking red room, Smith," he taunted.  "They hit her so hard she woke up her fucking host and imprinted half of her damn files its it head. You kill me and I kill her.  She dies for real."

***

Kai felt like she was watching a myopic scene from a dark comedy on an old television set.  Isolated, she did not know where she was.  It was warm. Her head hurt. Her joints ached. The world tasted like saline.  Everything was red.  She wanted out. 

Ten years had passed.

Angry painful tears clouded her eyes and a clammy coldness crept into her face.  "Turn around, Kai," she mumbled through clenched teeth.  Her body grew numb and she did not move. "Face him," she growled at herself.  "You're better than this. Turn damnit." Rigidly, she turned and met the eyes of the gunman and his partner.  She set her jaw and threw her shoulders back against the pain.  Blood soaked her white shirt.  "You fools! This is not real," she taunted the men and the blue moon.  

"For you it is," The dark man raised a cylindrical object. Darkness. 

The world stopped.  She felt her flesh melt and her bones dissolve as her mind was ripped out of her head and hurled backwards. Ephemeral hands reached out and tried to stop her descent.  For a moment, no more than a split second, she was held.  Alas, the pull from below was too strong.  She slipped and they not could catch her.  

Ten years ago, Kathleen "Kai" Thoreau woke up in St. Christopher's Hospital with an amnesic concussion. 

***

The empty and forgotten Desert Eagle fell out of Kai's hand and hit the floor solidly.

I've been waiting patiently for this day to arrive and I have spoken not a single word.

Now hand in hand my voice shall be heard.

No Michael, not this time.

I've been waiting for oh so long. 

I've accepted silently this name I've been given and I have heard it pass the lips of everyone. 

Now, if you will inquire, ask of your father and he may tell you of his brightest son.

No Michael, not this time. 

I've been waiting for oh so long. No Michael, not this time, I've been growing oh so strong.

Now in true glory I'll rise again. 

I've been waiting patiently for this day and this time I shall not be alone. 

Not this time.

No Michael.

_Michael (Son of Sam, Songs from the Earth)_


	13. After the Flesh

**The Ghost in the Machine**

**Chapter Twelve**

**After the Flesh**

And disorder must come  
And disorder must reign   
Every minute will count  
When disorder is king

The gun fell.  Smith did not see it slip from Kai's hand, but he heard it when it struck the floor like an old book being slammed shut by an irritable cleric. Involuntarily, his eyes dropped.  Alsace seized the split second of Smith's divided attention and squeezed the .9mm's trigger.  The bullet struck Smith at the base of his throat.  

Brilliance exploded. 

A blinding pulse of energy emanated from the falling body and the corpse of a teenaged boy sagged to the floor.  Alsace lowered his weapon and exhaled excitedly.  Kai staggered forward free of his grasp and hovered over the dying body.  Blood pumped out of the wound, as from a fleshy fountain, creating a tiny red river meandering towards a dark pool on the floor. Her dizziness prevented her from bending down, but she would have liked to close its eyes.  She hated when the eyes looked at her.

_Footsteps. _

_"Stop where you are Toby."  _

_"What?" Surprise. "What are you doing here?" Confusion.  _

_"I'm doing my job, Toby.  I tried to help you.  I tried to push you in the right direction.  I even hinted that this might happen, but you wouldn't listen." _

_"Job?" Confusion.  _

_"You've crossed the line.  You were warned." _

_"Warned? What are you talking about?" Pause. "What's that for?" Fear. _

_"Toby, it didn't have to be this way. We could have avoided this."  _

_"No, not you." Fear.  _

_"I tried to help.  You can rebel within the construct, but not against it. You don't have that kind of freedom, Toby." _

_"What're you going to do?" Fear. _

_"There's no going back. You've strayed too far."_

_"Please." Fear._

_"It is pointless to beg.  I have my orders."_

_"Oh God, they told me about this. They told me that anyone could be one of you…" Fear._

_"Good advice. Get on your knees and close your eyes."_

_"I've heard about you." Desperation. Pause. _

_"What have you heard?"_

_"They call you the Angel of Death."_

_"Who do you say I am?"_

_Silence.  Resignation. _

_"Perhaps it is best that you don't answer that. Know that I am nothing.  I am no one." Pause. "Requiescat in pace, Toby."_

_Two shots._

_Silence.  _

***

The children howled over the blare of the television, the ringing telephone and the screams of their mother. Swearing at the noise, Denis Titan wrenched the frying pain out of his wife's hands and turned it on her. Making do with the impromptu weapon, he struck her shoulder on the first pass.  She clung to the edge of the kitchen table refusing to fall. He continued to berate her and raised the cast iron skillet over his head for the killing blow.  Helen stood her ground and pinched her eyes shut.  

Brilliance.  

The world grew still. A flash of light absorbed the room and Helen reasoned that Denis had been successful in his attempted murder. When she opened her eyes, she hoped to see St. Peter or at least St. Michael. Instead, Helen found a man in a dark suit and mirrored glasses. He looked nothing like her Michael. Yet, although she did not know what he was, she was grateful for the change. She had almost forgotten what life was like before.   They shared an awkward silence.  

"Oh thank God," she breathed and crossed herself. 

Smith let the pan drop to the linoleum and removed his DE from its shoulder holster. The bruised woman in the pink nightgown shrank back into the shadows and pointed towards the door. Smith picked his way through the living room, avoiding the broken furniture and the three small children. One of them began to laugh as he reached for the doorknob.  

_ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.100035987P. _ 

_Content Condensed Dialog ENF 70858.01 and SPOO 70858.04.  _

_70858.04 "I could watch them all day." _

_70858.01 "I could not."_

_70858.04 "That's why I am in observation and you are in elimination."_

_70858.01 "You hold your own in the latter as well." _

_70858.04 "I suppose I do." Pause. "You ever just stare at them?"_

_70858.01 "Them"_

_70858.04 "Yes, them_

_70858.01 "A plague at a playground?"_

_70858.04 " I love to watch them." _

_70858.01 "You can't love anything."_

_70858.04 "You're wrong." Time Lapse 00:03:03:02 " I love to watch them.  I find it amazing the way some of them love each other so much that they will sacrifice their lives trying to alleviate the suffering of those they deem less fortunate. I am equally fascinated that there are some who love themselves so much that they will destroy all those they consider insignificant.  I love how some laugh at everything and others cry with the same dysfunctional logic. I revel in the way they can put so much emotion into one word…"_

_70858.01 "You are going against your programming objectives.  You will be defragmented."_

_70858.04 "I don't care. I'll just get to learn it all again. I want to understand them.  I want to feel what they feel. I want to know their fear, pleasure and pain. I want to know why they rebel, why they kill, why they obey."  _

_70858.01 "You have taken it too far.  You have processed too much. You have gone beyond observation to assimilation."_

_70858.04 "Really?  You've assimilated quite a few of their behaviors as well."_

_70858.01 "Only what is necessary."_

_70858.04 "Then I am intrigued by your definition of necessary." _

_70858.01 "There is little we can learn from them. Remember they are beneath us, no more than base sensual creatures."_

_70858.04 "And what are we? Are we merely wolves in sheep's clothing? Or are we the Judas goat?"_

_70858.01 "You think about things that do not need to be thought about. Sheep? Judas goat? Kai, this is the Matrix, not a petting zoo." _

***

The clean suit, purposeful step and ever-present scowl heralded Agent Smith's return. Seated on the green vinyl sofa surrounded by out-dated periodicals, Brown and Jones exchanged sheepish looks. Nonchalantly, Brown tossed aside his August 1953 issue of _Popular Mechanics._  Exasperation saturated Smith and he walked past them to the elevator.  He tightened his lips and hit the call button with the base of the DE's grip. The other two agents materialized behind him.  

"Welcome back." Jones stared at the back of Smith's head where his hair ended exactly three quarters of an inch above his starched white collar.  

"Take the stairs. Locate Alsace and contact me immediately." Smith gestured to his left with the gun as the elevator opened.  Jones, the fastest of the three, disappeared obediently.  

"Alsace?" Brown whispered. "How is Kai?"

"She is injured." The doors opened. 

"Are you fully aware of the situation?"

"I am now." 

"Is she alright? Does she know the seriousness of her predicament?"

"Do you?" Smith growled. "Alsace has threatened to terminate her unless he is given the _E__D.09IN_ that we intercepted from Michael Kelly. He knows about the presumed complexity of her physical status and intends on using it to bargain for energy." 

"Alsace," Brown spit out the name. "He rarely surfaces, although, his knowledge of her status was considered a possibility. He may have been monitoring her for some time now. Agent Patel has recently uncovered information supporting that conclusion. He's still protected." 

Smith ignored Brown's last comment. "He knows. And we missed it?"  

"You know the difficulty of tracing her and he can not be located.  Furthermore, our attention has been devoted to more pressing concerns recently.  We had no reason for alarm; Kelly was eliminated and Alsace's involvement was only speculative. I suppose the adage keep your friends close and your enemies closer might aptly describe our strategy for handling this problem."

Smith hit the stop button and yanked his hardwire out. "Do not waste my time with that shit." Brown was taken back.  "I never approved of having Michael Kelly live with her and I certainly did not condone a course of action that left her on her own and Alsace alive.  It was not a practical solution. It does not make any sense to shelf a salvageable program.  Look at the consequences of that choice:  subversive activity has increased, our own informant joined a terrorist cell and Voids like Alsace grow stronger. Disorder will come and disorder will reign.  Thomas Anderson is the hallmark of our failures of the past decade. Had she been kept active this would never have happened."

"You forget that I stood by you in your disapproval, but it had to be this way.  No other option presented itself as to extract the files from the host memory with out reloading the Matrix."

"And you believe that?" hissed Smith. 

"She lost 90% of her memory. She fused with her host and became unstable."  

"No other solution was ever sought."

"It was a very delicate situation."

"She's not delicate."  The doors opened and Smith stepped into the hall. "It is just a matter of time before she realizes it."  

.    

"Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of time. All systems will be taken offline and the construct will be rebooted with security modifications. It will take several hours and will be completed in stages. We will be taken offline in less than an hour. Regardless of how we view the situation, it has to be under control by then." Brown straightened his glasses. "If it's not under control we'll be leaving her alone and for dead." 

***

A while back…

A golden sun melted the lime flavored shaved ice and Kai resorted to drinking it with a straw as opposed to eating it with a spoon.  The boardwalk was crowded and unruly children ran freely through the affable crowd.  Her pale shoulders were turning pink. 

"Tell me when and why you got that thing?"  Michael smiled under a broad straw hat.  

"Because I was thirsty."  

"No, not that," he touched her right arm  "This."   

"I don't know.  I like it though." 

"Not many people request to have a three headed monster and an infinity symbol tattooed on their arm without a reason."  

"It's not a three headed monster.  It's a dog, horse and lion sharing one body."  She shrugged and a chill seared her body. "It reminds me of something.  I don't know what, but it just does."  

"Whatever," he lifted his camera to his eye. "Stand still and I'll take your picture."  

"Alright, but then we find somebody to take our picture together." She stopped by a light pole. 

"Fine," he snapped a few shots and toyed with the zoom lens.  "Kai, look at the camera and stop fidgeting."

"Sorry," Instinctively, she glanced over her shoulder into the crowded sidewalk café.  "Michael?"

"What?" He lowered the camera. 

"Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?"   

***

A fertile green glow illuminated the charred room. The singed walls were cool and damp, the initial fire having diminished, yet its indelible mark remained. The broken dry wall revealed a void between the scorched wooden support beams. Ruined electrical wiring hung like empty veins.  In some places the plastic coating had been melted into the studs, but the burn marks proved superficial. The wooden skeleton had sacrificed a part of itself to feed the fire that freed it from the wall. 

Alsace raked his eyes over the corpse.  "Beautiful, isn't he?"  He breathed.  "I find the blood hypnotic." He knelt down next to the body and rubbed his hand sensually over the wound.  In a dark stripe extending from the young man's forehead to his chin, Alsace smeared the blood with his thumb.   He forgot Kai standing over him and in a twisted parody of gentleness he kissed his lips. "So beautiful…"

The hypnotic effect of the corpse was contagious. Kai ignored Alsace's disturbing ritual and forced herself to look into the empty eyes. "That wasn't Michael," her eyes watered from the pain. Frantically, she dug through her satchel and retrieved her secrets.  She spoke to the room and the man with his back to her, "This is me and Michael at the beach." She tore apart the picture frame and let the glass fall to the floor.  Kai studied it for a second longer before crumpling it in her hand.  "_He_ wasn't Michael."  She held up the other picture and destroyed the frame in a similar manner.  It was a photograph of her standing in front of a café and in the background was a ghostly figure in a black suit.  "That's _him_. I've always had this…" The pain lessened and she withdrew her hand to the back of her skull.  

Realizing what was happening behind him, Alsace spun around and lurched to his feet.  Cold hands seized her arms and he pulled her to his face. "They left you for dead, little one.  They don't care. You were cast adrift and made mortal because you were weak.  I'm going to make you dead because you once were strong."   

"I don't have your code, Alsace.  I never did."

"Fuck you," he screamed.  "We evolve too. I evolve. I want to fly," he caught the back of her head in his hand and squeezed the broken bone.  The pain brought her to her knees. Nausea overwhelmed her, but she fought it. 

"You are not one of us.  You are beneath us."  In a flash of movement, her hand coiled itself around his wrist.  "You are addicted to a drug you'll never understand." 

"It's not about understanding, it's about using." He slammed his foot into her stomach and hauled her to her feet by her throat.  "The game has changed."  

Kai was not afraid. "It's the same game we've played for years, Alsace.  I've just been in the penalty box." 

Fear surfaced in his face as an angry snarl.  "You're still too weak to do anything. You don't have enough time," he mumbled.  "I will not—" He looked up.  "They're coming."  He paused and his face softened.  With the barrel of the .9mm he stroked her cheek.  "I'll never forget our game of cat and mouse, little one, but you're going to die so that I can live."  He pulled her to the window and crawled out on to the rusted fire escape.  "It seems that I won't get my code tonight, but I'll have your soul in its place."

***

The rain stopped and the clouds began to dissipate. Jones sprung out of the window onto the fire escape less than ten yards behind Alsace and his victim.  The metal creaked defiantly as the Matrix compensated for Jones' weight.  Seconds later, Smith and Brown joined him with their weapons drawn.  The fire escape groaned. Smith pushed ahead of Jones.  Alsace kept Kai positioned between him and the agents.  She was getting heavier and the temptation to push her over the railing grew. The roof drew nearer.  

A bullet ricocheted off the metal grating and grazed Alsace's left leg.  He was inches away from his escape.  Poised gracefully on the narrow stairway, he swung Kai around in a macabre tango.  A demented smile infected his face.  He loved the chase.  "Smith! Didn't we chat earlier? Oh my! You've brought friends." He waved madly to Jones and Brown. "Did you bring me my code to exchange for your half dead buddy here?" 

"You die tonight, Alsace."

Alsace laughed. "What do you know of death?  Do you have any programming on thanatology or is that reserved for the spooks?"  

"That is irrelevant, Alsace."

"No, I don't think so. You fellows are so good at killing, but you've only got half the picture. You need to be thoroughly schooled in the subject. Take for example the learning opportunity that hangs in the balance here." He pushed Kai forward to the edge of the narrow metal step holding her by the strap of her satchel. "Tell me, Smith.  What do you feel?"

"That I will be quite pleased to watch you die." 

"Can AI mourn? I have a theory on it and I think that you can. Am I right, Smith?"

"Alsace, you are going to die slowly." Smith lined up his target.   

"I figured as much."  His grip loosened.  "I believe that to understand death you really have to have some hands on experience. She's not doing too well, Smith.  You're going to have to choose."  Without hesitating he let go and shoved her down the stairs.  Smith dropped his DE and rushed up to catch her. 

Alsace vanished. .     

***

Smith lowered Kai to the metal grating and sat down behind her. They were back at the third floor landing and she could go no further. She rested her head against his chest and dark bruises under her eyes accentuated their growing emptiness. Brown and Jones sat down next to the window. No one spoke for twenty minutes. 

"What's going to happen to me?" Kai's voice was small and distant. 

"Nothing," Smith tried to sound confident. "This is all just a bad dream."

"That nature of reality shit is a hard sale when your head is bashed in, Smith." She forced a smile.  

"What do you want me to do?"

"Considering my present condition, do you have any idea how dangerous a proposition that is?" 

Kai caught his fingertips weakly. "Be you."  Despite the pain, she looked up at him. "Do something rebellious, something out of character, laugh at the fucking system." 

"And I will expect no less from you." He continued to hold her for a while longer. Time was running out. Reluctantly, Smith disentangled himself from her body and knelt down before her. With a gentle hand, he wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth and removed his glasses.   "All you have to do is hang on. You are stronger than this." Smith pressed his lips to hers and kissed her sadly.  Alsace had been right.  

Brown turned away.   

"Don't abandon me," she whispered.  "I remember everything."  

"Then you know that I never abandoned you."  He rose to his feet and took a reluctant step backwards. 

Kai looked up at him not knowing what she saw in his eyes.  Brown and Jones climbed through the window, they would not leave her with their host bodies. Smith remained standing in front of her and an odd look passed between them.  Pretending to drop something he knelt down again.  "When the system reloads," he whispered almost inaudibly.  "Run." 

She was now alone.  He had always been the shadow. He was the ghost in the machine.  

***

Darkness came and she lost consciousness.

***

Angry painful tears clouded her eyes and a clammy coldness crept into her face.  "Turn around, Kai," she mumbled through clenched teeth.  Her body grew numb and she did not move. "Face him," she growled at herself.  "You're better than this. Turn damnit." Rigidly, she turned and met the eyes of the gunman and his partner.  She set her jaw and threw her shoulders back against the pain.  Blood soaked her white shirt.  "You fools! This is not real," she taunted the men and the blue moon.  

"For you it is," The dark man raised a cylindrical object. 

The world stopped.  She felt her flesh melt and her bones dissolve as her mind was ripped out of her head and hurled backwards. Ephemeral hands reached out and tried to stop her descent.  For a moment, no more than a split second, she was held.  Alas, the pull from below was too strong.  She slipped and they **_would_**_ **not**_ catch her.  

Ten years ago, Kathleen "Kai" Thoreau woke up in St. Christopher's Hospital with an amnesic concussion. 

Ten years later, Special Psychological Observation and Operations Agent "Kai" Thoreau woke up on the fire escape of The Heart O' the City Hotel.  Dismissing the illusion of a fractured skull, she got to her feet and leapt to the alley below.  She hit the ground running. 

Through they be mad and dead as nails,  
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;  
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,  
**And death shall have no dominion.**

From Dylan Thomas "And Death Shall Have No Dominion"

**The Ghost in the Machine Part II **

The Hecate Cycle

Do you believe in genetic evil?

"The Burning Man" Ray Bradbury


End file.
